PEOPLE.IDEAS.PERFORMANCE

81 transactional leaders, who seem to be more self-interested and focus more on the personal benefit of change. While it is not intended to sound like all individualistic societies are just interested in self, it is useful to see the continuum of collectivist – individualistic as including a continuum of transformational – transactional leadership style. While there are many members of individualistic societies who are interested in the well-being of the larger organization, or social environment, the appeal to individualists should include as much about the benefits to self and inner-circle members rather than just focus on the greater good for the greater group of people in the organization, or society. The expatriate manager, whether in a collectivist or individualist society should follow Lewin’s model of change and his understanding of field theory (Lewin, 1947). Lewin proposed that lasting change requires three phases: (a) unfreezing , (b) change , and (c) refreezing . To understand each phase Lewin proposed that the change agent understand the forces that cause people to stay with status quo, accept change, and stay with the change, rather than revert to the prior state of existence. Kanter, Stein, and Jick (1992) argued that neither organizations, nor societies are actually frozen and changing, but Lewin’s metaphor of unfreezing, changing and refreezing helps us understand that the status quo is a powerful state to be in and organizations and societies, more so in collectivist environments than individualist environments will resist the call for change, unless something happens to make the organizational, or societal, members want to change. Similar to understanding Lewin’s force field analysis, the expatriate manager would do well to understand Greimas and Rastier’s (1968) semiotics, or understand how the individual and social values of a society interact. The expatriate manager must first understand the force fields before attempting to change the organization, or society. Within organizations and societies there are thought leaders (McCrimmon, 2006) who should be sought out and find out why the organization, or society, does what it does, the way that it does it and the perception of the benefits of maintaining the status quo. The expatriate manager would then need to frame the proposed change in the context of a socially similar idea. For example, if a social change in childhood education is sought it might be more appealing for members of society to accept the change if the proposed change showed the result to be happier and more employable young adults that would attract more foreign investment and jobs to the local communities. The conventional sign of employment would be for the greater good in a collectivist society but more for the betterment of the individualistic person’s family and children having a better future. In many ways this is similar to Roger’s (1995) adoption and diffusion of innovation. The new idea must be presented in a way that shows the advantage of the new idea and the ease of adoption. These must be framed within the forces that promote/resist change and the signs/symbols that connect individual and societal values. (7+,&$/ /($'(56+,3 67</(6 In this section we focus on the various leadership styles that the expatriate manager may wish to use in order to be successful in the collectivist and individualist societies. The leadership styles selected for this section are those that have a focus on the group as a whole and those that have a focus on the individual, since the premise is that in collectivist cultures the manger would need to focus on the whole whereas in individualist cultures the manager would need to focus on the individual. While we discuss each style as if it was unique and discreet from the other styles, we do recognize and wish to point out that these styles exist on a continuum from collectivist to individualist and that this an overlap, as well as the fact that managers may use elements from multiple styles. Our focus in this section is to present the