Leadership in Born Globals : The Global Leader and their Influence on Individuals

Abstract: Background Globalisation has led to the perception of a “flat” world, meaning that it is fairly easy to cross geographical boundaries and do business in different countries. With globalisation, a new phenomenon arose, termed Born Globals. Born Globals seek international operations from or near their inception. These companies become more and more economically important, and their appearance has increased significantly over the last decades due to economic and technological developments. In this context, global leadership has gained importance, especially competencies such as the global mindset, cultural intelligence, and deutero learning. Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to analyse global leadership, specifically cultural intelligence, the global mindset, deutero learning and the development of global leaders, and how it influences the entrepreneurial attitude of individual employees in Born Global Companies. To do so, we have analysed Prezi, a Born Global company, specifically from the employee’s perspective, complementing self-perception leadership research.   Method We have suggested four propositions, namely that the leader in Born Global Companies has high cultural intelligence, a global mindset, that these characteristics influence the entrepreneurial attitude of the individual, and that human resource management is highly involved in the development of global leaders. These have been tested in a case study strategy with both qualitative and qualitative methods. Conclusion We confirmed the propositions concerning the cultural intelligence and the global mindset, however we had to reject the propositions concerning the entrepreneurial attitude of the individual, since we could not establish a relationship between the individual entrepreneurial attitude and global leadership characteristics. Our research suggests that a relationship with the global culture in the company is more likely. Finally, the last proposition had to be rejected, because human resource management was not highly involved in developing the global leadership characteristics, but the diversity and culture within the company served as an “informal” intercultural training.