Effective leadership in a multi-polar and multi-cultural world

Sammanfattning: More and more organizations are expanding from a local to a global market space, and it’s not only Western enterprises that expand globally, enterprises from emerging countries are doing the same. Especially China and India are establishing themselves as economic centers and are rapidly becoming the new global economic superpowers. As Western enterprises continues to establish themselves into these emerging markets, an understanding of local culture and how it affect Western leadership practices and behavior is key in order to become a successful leader. In the very same way as enterprises from emerging markets need to understand the local culture when they establish themselves in Western countries. The aim of this thesis is to investigate what cultural factors/dimension that affect leadership in general as well as to survey Swedish leaders operating in China and India about their experiences and recommendations from these markets and see how all of this affect Western leadership theories.