"Some things you can?t really learn through training courses? -En studie om globalt ledarskap i kinesisk och svensk kontext
In recent years more countries have started to blur out their national boundaries to create andrely on international collaborations. China is one of the fastest growing markets in the worldand play an important role on export and import of commodities across the globe. ManySwedish companies have more business collaborations with China than ever. Differencesbetween the cultures can lead to many difficulties for both the employees and the employer.There is both a challenge and a necessityto find ways to communicate, and to get moreknowledge in how to follow and lead people from different background and perspectives. Theaim of this study is to investigate how leaders through their leadership deal with contextualdifferences between China and Sweden and which effect these differences can have. Thisstudy is made through qualitative interviews with ten managers working in one of Sweden?slargest multinational enterprises. The main theory in this study is global mindset and globalleadership. Global mindset is a way of thinking and being that helps you to have a broadperspective on different cultures. The literature states that this will be an importantperspective for global leaders so that they will be able to lead employees in multinationalcompanies.The target audience for our study is managers that have experience managing both Swedishand Chinese employers in global teams. The empirical result and discussion is structured by athematic analysis that outlines five main themes; Expectation on the leader, communication,relationships, to lead from a distance and coping strategies. Because it was a Swedishcompany with Swedish core values we found that the Chinese managers had to work harder toadapt to the organisational culture and to open up and change the mindset not only in the coworkersbut also in themselves. Our findings is that to understand the complexity of anotherculture you must understand your own culture and which part it plays and how it can beperceived. It is not enough to learn about the other culture, it has to be an integration andcontinual progress to reach common understanding. Our conclusion is that you need to have aglobal mindset, both as employer and employee, to succeed in working with differentcultures.