Shakespeare on Leadership, Communication and Management: Implications for Cross-cultural Business Contexts

Abstract

Shakespeare has been widely recognized as a dramaturgist who through his intriguing pageantry of kings presents an effective text of leadership, communication and management that has inspired hosts of modern day business practitioners. Yet it is interesting to note that the management perspective which Shakespeare seems to espouse has emanated from the cultural ethos of his native country, Great Britain. Britain has been portrayed by prominent interculturists such as Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, Edward T. Hall as a low power distance, weak uncertainty avoidance, low-context culture with high masculinity and individualism index, demonstrating achievement and inner-directed value orientations. Even Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) study in its cultural taxonomy identifies a ramification of Anglo-cluster leadership model with a distinct skill set which includes Great Britain. The character lineaments of Shakespeare's king leaders present congruence with the leadership profiles defined for diverse cultural demarcations by these seminal works on cross-cultural management with remarkable fidelity thereby endorsing the view that culture and leadership are inextricably woven together in a symbiotic engagement. The article applies theories of intercultural management to the leadership, communication and management inferences that can be drawn from the literature of this bard of Avon to reach the conclusion that this master craftsman evinces a strong cultural affiliation to his native country in offering his sagacious exhortations which are designed for an English audience and hence, cannot be transplanted in the Oriental part of the world without indigenizing them in the process of transposition to fit into foreign cultural constructs. Thus, in order to be globally relevant an intercultural reading of Shakespeare has to be practised with systemic mutations in his scripts in order to offer an effective transnational discourse to management practitioners keeping in view the plurality of disparate socio-cultural business contexts. © 2014 Mudra Institute of Communications.