Abstract Title: National Culture and Influences on Leadership: A Case Study of CBRE in Sweden Level: Final thesis for Bachelor Degree in Arts/Science and Business Administration Authors: Chatzidakis, Emmanouil & Stenström, Dennis Supervisor: Ehsanul Huda Chowdhury, PhD Date: 05.06.2014 Aim: The purpose of this study is to examine the influences of national culture on leadership based on Power Distance, Masculinity versus Femininity and Uncertainty Avoidance within CBRE in Sweden. Method: Explorative interviews with five top managers from CBRE in Sweden was performed and a questionnaire was sent to the staff. To achieve an understanding of national culture and influences on leadership, we have based our study on the scientific philosophy of hermeneutics. Findings and conclusions: Managers from CBRE in Sweden share many views on leadership that include the importance of teamwork, cooperation, open communication and negotiation. They motivate employees by making them feel important, integrating them into the group and give them responsibility to handle difficult situations in the way they feel is best. The level of stress at work varies between managers but they all tries to handle it by being creative and enhancing performance by prioritizing their workload. Family, friends and physical exercise are also important factors as to reduce stress. Practical implications: This paper gives an insight of the national culture of Sweden and influences on leadership within the real estate service industry. Originality/value: This paper does not give a complete picture of the situation in all industries in the whole country, since we have only focused on one company, CBRE, which operates within the real estate service industry. It can, however, contribute as a guide mostly for managers and employees from other countries who are interested in Sweden’s national culture and business environment. It may also be useful for companies that are planning to expand to Sweden so they can see how leadership looks like. Suggestions for further study: National culture and influences on leadership within larger companies can be studied, as well as on mergers and acquisitions and implications of national culture on a foreign employee or manager. Key words: Internationalization, National Culture, Leadership, Real Estate Service Industry,

This thesis addresses a neglected aspect in the emotional labour literature by seeking to identify the impact of societal culture on how service workers perform emotional labour and its effect on their wellbeing, in terms of the emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation dimensions of burnout. Its original contribution lies in using respondents residing in two contrasting cultures, the Philippines and Australia. The research instrument brings together the INDCOL survey, Emotional Labour Scale, Maslach Burnout Inventory, and job autonomy questions from the Job Diagnostic Survey. Data is analysed from 734 surveys completed by guest-contact workers; hypotheses are tested using the independent samples t-test in SPSS. Meaningful results mainly emerge from comparing responses filtered according to how respondents describe themselves on the INDCOL dimensions rather than by their countries of residence, highlighting the importance of identifying individual-level differences within societies rather than relying on overall descriptions of culture, for such comparative purposes. Respondents report higher levels of burnout when using surface-acting more frequently, and lower levels of burnout when using deep-acting more often. Further, they report similar levels of deep-acting and burnout, and those who report high job autonomy also report lower levels of burnout. Higher levels of burnout are reported by individualists who use surface-acting more frequently. The significance of these findings is the emergence of similar results among respondents in the contrasting culture of the Philippines. The final key finding is that respondents who perform high levels of emotional labour and who experience high job autonomy report less depersonalisation in Australia than the Philippines. Overall, these findings support the usefulness of applying culturally sensitive HRD interventions in the Philippines as well as Australia, to increase the ability of service workers to perform sincere emotional labour and replace negative consequences with positive outcomes for workers, customers and hotels.

Background: Subsidiaries to multinational enterprises encounter pressure to fit the national cultural context as well as to keep consistent with the global corporation. For a Swedish multinational enterprise to be able to seize business opportunities in Thailand, an important aspect to take into consideration is the difference in national culture. It is the responsibility of the leader in the Swedish subsidiary in Thailand to manage the multinational enterprise corporate culture while also taking into account the Thai national culture. Global leadership competencies can enable this, although there is a lack of a unified framework of global leadership competencies. Aim:  The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding as to which global leadership competencies leaders in subsidiaries to Swedish multinational enterprises in Thailand should possess in order to manage the Swedish corporate culture while taking Thai national culture into account.   Methodology: The study has applied a qualitative research strategy and an abductive research approach. The data has been obtained from eight semi-structured interviews with four Swedish companies present in Thailand. Conclusion: Through a deeper understanding of global leadership competencies, this study concludes and provides evidence of six global leadership competencies that are of extra importance for leaders in Swedish subsidiaries in Thailand when managing the Swedish corporate culture and taking the Thai national culture into account.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to comprehend and analyse the impact of national culture on leadership within the healthcare industry. Method: This is an exploratory research in which qualitative data have been used. Interviews have been held with employees at Elekta-Greece EPE, Athens in Greece. As for validity and reliability, the data for this study were collected from a real business case (Elekta) via Skype interviews and then the responses were transcribed and later analysed in relation to fundamental academic research in combination with our critical thinking. Findings & Conclusions: By conducting this study, we discovered that culture can play a major role in the leadership behaviour for companies that operate within the healthcare industry on a global scale. Both national and corporate cultures influence the leader(s) and the employees of a company, either in a positive or a negative way. Cultural attributes, background, history, policies, rules and regulations are some of the factors that can be a game „‟changer‟‟ for the leadership of international companies. Those characteristics can affect work performance, job satisfaction, and the image of the company. Finally our conclusions also suggest that there is a difference between other industries and healthcare industry because of the power structure and the rigidness of the last one. Originality & Value: This research is unique in its kind due to the fact that there is no similar case or literature that examines the impact of national culture on leadership for international healthcare companies, like Elekta. However, there has been some research conducted within this industry during the last years, covering the subject of marketing. Limitations & Future Research: The limitation of this research is that it is a single case study so it cannot represent and be reflected for the whole healthcare industry. Also we could not acquire raw data from the parent company so we based the comparison on the data from Elekta-Greece and secondary data for the parent company. As for further investigation we suggest the expansion of this topic by conducting more case studies, add more countries at the same time in order to be able to create results that can be generalized for a successful cultural leadership on health-care industry.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide information and a deeper understanding of how the Russian cultural phenomenon blat affects the possibility for Swedish companies to conduct business in the Russian market. In order to conduct this research, relevant aspects of the phenomenon has been demonstrated, identified and analysed in relation to culture, networks and internationalization. This thesis follows a deductive approach, as the research topic is considered rather unexplored. In an attempt to acquire deeper information, a qualitative research method provides deeper understanding how the topic affects Swedish companies. The literature review chapter forms the base of this thesis as it includes theories related to culture, networks, the cultural phenomenon of blat and internationalization. Theories have formed the conceptual framework in an effort to demonstrate connections between theories. The empirical findings have been collected in order to analyse the data in relation to the theories, where the empirics drive from multiple case studies upon Swedish companies. The analysis chapter is structured in accordance with the conceptual framework, where a discussion of the differences and dissimilarities between theories and empirical findings are included. In the following chapter, the conclusion constitutes from theory, empirical findings and analysed data. Moreover, the final chapter consist of implications, recommendations, limitations and suggestions for further research. The main theoretical implications, engage in fill the research gap and addresses blat in an international situation connected to social networks and culture. The main practical implications indicate that the cultural phenomenon blat is not a necessity for Swedish companies when internationalizing to the Russian market although it may facilitate the process. It becomes more important to understand blat as companies increase their market commitment.

The goal of this thesis is to provide an overview of current knowledge in the area of culture research and demonstrate, using example of the IKEA company, how organizational culture influences business environment In the theoretical part, this thesis deals with the subject of culture in general and it's impact on members of society. It is described how culture develops and strengthens. Also discussed are leading approaches to researching culture, relationship between national and organizational culture and organizational culture typologies. In the practical section, swedish culture, management style and the IKEA company and it's culture are introduced. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees of two different IKEA organizations in the Czech Republic in order to find out how the company transmits the culture to new employees, to what extent the employees are familiar with the culture and what meaning they attribute to it.

I examine whether cultural differences in trust towards others, materialism, and risk aversion lower financial statement comparability between countries that require International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”). Evidence from various academic disciplines suggest that cultural beliefs and values affect individuals’ estimates and judgments and their consequent decisions, including economic and financial decisions. I posit that certain cultural beliefs and values also affect the estimates and judgments of corporate managers, resulting in inconsistent reporting decisions for given economic events and lower financial statement comparability. I find that two countries have lower comparability when there are greater cultural differences in trust towards others, materialism, and risk aversion. In cross-sectional tests, I find weak evidence that stronger enforcement of IFRS moderates the cultural effects on cross-country financial statement comparability. Stronger enforcement of regulations and law does not moderate the cultural effects. These findings suggest that having a strong IFRS, regulatory, or legal enforcement does not effectively moderate the impact of culture on cross-country financial statement comparability. A possible explanation is that cultural influence on financial reporting is also manifested through enforcement officials; in other words, those in charge of the enforcement are also subject to the same cultural beliefs and values as others involved in the reporting process, making moderation less likely.

<p>The study of the cultures has been a primary focus of sociology, psychology and anthropology since their inception. Increasing globalization has brought the attention of academics and practitioners to the study of national cultures and their differences into the management area. Likewise, the parallel trend towards running some business through projects has brought broader perspectives such as national cultures into the project management field. Recent academic literature demonstrated that national culture has a major impact on management practices. However, the element of national culture is elusively described in the project management field. No extensive tests were found on the comparison of the project planning among countries, which could help to establish relationship between national cultures and project planning capabilities. Using GLOBE study to capture national cultures and Project Management Planning Quality (PMPQ) model to capture project planning approach and organizational planning support, this paper addresses this gap by comparing national culture, project planning and organizational project planning support across four different countries: Malaysia, Japan, Sweden and Israel. The findings of this thesis are that there are both similarities and differences in project planning between different countries. In organizational project planning support practices, two clusters were identified. It attempts to answer questions about the relevance of culture to project planning and concludes with implications to project managers.</p>

<p>Aim: The aim of this research is to formulate India market product strategy for the global multinational corporate Vodafone Inc.,</p><p>Investigate the influence of national cultures in strategy formulation. Applying cultural synthesis in the strategy formulations for target markets. </p><p>Method: The main methods of data collection are individual interviews and discussions and group cultural training. A computer online questionnaire is used past the interview for correlation and analysis of responses. Two sets of interviews pre-cultural training and post-cultural training are conducted. The results are presented, analysed, reflected and related to the research. The research is applied to deliver a reformulated product strategy for Vodafone Inc.,</p><p>Result & Conclusion: This research bought out the implications of national cultures in strategy formulation and how strategy can be delivered by infusing culture as one of the parameter in strategy formulation. The end result is strategy that is closer to local market customer needs and wants aligned with organization business objectives. The conclusion is that global multinationals could deliver better strategy that applies globally to each of the local subsidiaries by embedding ethos of the regional markets in the strategy formulation.</p><p>Suggestions of future research: The research focussed on strengthening strategy formulation by embedding culture as parameter. The theme could be extended to strategy implementation in future research.</p><p>Contribution of the thesis: This research has added value to the strategy formulation, by proposing a new model, where the strategy team comprehends the national culture value of target markets and blends them as one of the parameters in the information’s and data. Thus the final interpretation of the information and data is a collective reflection of own national culture values and the target market cultural values.</p>

Based on Hofstede's findings, this study breaks down Kogut and Singh's index of cultural distance, examining implications for acquisition performance of each individual dimension. Hypotheses are formulated, and based on deal data covering 488 acquisitions with American companies as acquirers, tested through linear regression. We find support for a positive relationship between cultural distance of power distance and performance, and an inverse relationship between cultural distance of masculinity and performance. Significant results are not obtained for the remaining dimensions.