Decision Making and Culture - Essay Example

The paper "Decision Making and Culture" is a worthy example of a management essay. My personal approach to decision making is a process which begins with an examination of the situation. The goal of this examination is to obtain as much relevant information as possible. Once this information is present, it gives me the chance to evaluate several different decisions and courses of action as well as their likely results. I then select the best possible decision out of those and finally, when I have the results of the decision I revaluate and try to learn what I could do better if a similar situation presents itself in the future.

Culture, empowerment, and leadership There are several aspects of culture which can impact both empowerment and coaching and these connect with the very fundamentals of culture itself. For example, a certain level of informality may be a part of the business environment when it comes to the American corporate world where employees would expect to be empowered and the boss would be seen as more of a senior colleague than the absolute ruler of the company. On the other hand, the Japanese culture may focus on formal hierarchical relationships under which empowerment would be slightly limited while the leader of the company would be given more formalized respect than his American counterpart (Kolb et. al. 2007).

Thus the individual style of leadership would have to be tailored to the culture of the regional location a leader operates in or even to the company itself that can have a culture island which is different from the culture of the region. For example, a military or paramilitary organization would be very likely to have a strict hierarchy where rules are followed to the letter and leadership is not questioned. On the other hand, a company dealing with IT solutions may have groups and teams that could even function independently of corporate bosses as long as they have the right directions.

It becomes the duty of a good leader to recognize, appreciate and then use these cultural differences to try and gain a competitive advantage over the competition.