Cosmopolitan leaders are sensitive, innovative, and participative leaders, capa-ble of operating comfortably in a global or pluralistic environment (Harris & Moran, 1991). These multinational and multicultural representatives are open and flexible when approaching others, can cope with situations and people quite different from their background, and are willing to adjust personal attitudes and perceptions. Cosmopolitan leaders strive to create cultural synergy by seeking the widest input and combining the best in varied cultures while managing accelerating change. They are knowledgeable about cultural influ-ences and build on the very differences in the world’s people for mutual growth and accomplishment by cooperation.
As we become increasingly cosmopolitan, we gain new perspectives and outlooks that reflect an integrative “third-culture” perspective (Casmir,1999). We are better able to reconcile seemingly contradictory elements of peoples and cultures and transform them into a complementary system. Gudykunst and Kim (2003) note that “becoming intercultural is a gradual process of lib-erating ourselves from our limited and exclusive interests and viewpoints and striving to attain a perspective in which we see ourselves as a part of a larger, more inclusive whole”
The globalization of the economy, coupled with advances in mass media and transportation, is breaking down the traditional barriers among groups of peoples and their differing cultures.A homogenization process is underway that is contributing to the emergence of a world culture. A world cultureis the idea that, as conventional impediments of differing cultures decline and the commonality of human needs is emphasized, one culture will emerga new culture to which all people will adhere (Chaney & Martin, 2004). This world culture demands more culturally sensitive leaders who are alert to serving the commonality of human needs and markets with strategies that are transna-tional. It requires cosmopolitan leaders who can transcend their own culture.
Subject: COSMOPOLITAN LEADERS AND AN EMERGING WORLD CULTURE 
Wed Apr 23, 2014 2:21 pm
