ABSTRACT
Early scholars in the field of global leadership have drawn heavily from four fields that address effectiveness in working across cultures. They are intercultural communication competence, expatriation, global management, and comparative leadership. Intercultural communication competence comprises knowledge, skills, attitudes, and awareness. It includes knowledge that is culture-specific, culture-general, and context-specific. Expatriates are employees who have been sent by their employers to reside and work outside of their home country to a related unit in foreign country on temporary assignment, usually for a term that lasts more than six months and less than five years. The field of comparative leadership studies differences and similarities in indigenous leadership styles of different countries or regions. The most extensive comparative leadership contribution to date comes from Project GLOBE. Based on their findings about cultural differences and diverse leadership profiles, GLOBE researchers hypothesized that global leaders require global mindset, tolerance of ambiguity, and cultural adaptability and flexibility, but they did not study global leaders directly.
