What is Global Management Perspective?

Global perspective concerns ones attitude and disposition toward foreign attitudes, beliefs, values, and practices. Some types of global perspective and attitude toward global management include:

• Parochialism - This concerns ones tendency to view things narrowly - as opposed to considering the wider context for an issue or situation. It is synonymous with close-mindedness.
• Polycentric Attitude - A polycentric approach is when executives from a companys headquarters set strategy but defer decision-making to nationals running the subsidiaries in foreign countries. The benefit is that local nationals bring important knowledge concerning customer interest, values, perspective.
• Geocentric Attitude - This is an approach where managers are appointment to international offices regardless of their nationality or cultural experience or knowledge. The focus is more on individual ability, rather than deference to local managers.
• Ethnocentric - This approach is where the leadership of a company is located in the companys national headquarters. All decision-making and control are centralized there, rather than in the country of operations. There is very little autonomy at the local, operational level. This approach adopts the perspective that the companys business model and management decisions will succeed in the foreign environment without local knowledge or input.
• Regiocentric -This approach focuses on local management and control of subsidiaries. The managers are generally local nationals with specific knowledge and understanding of the local environment. The local branches have extensive autonomy in management, strategy, and decision making. The head office tends to be staffed by expatriates from operating countries.

Back to: Business Management