Abstract

Global mindset is a critical factor for organizational development. Global mindset is defined as the ability of leaders to influence individuals, groups, and organizations to adjust to different environments and cultures internationally through openness to and awareness of diversity across cultures and markets. In order to identify factors that affect the mindset of leaders in different cultural contexts, a survey based on an existing global mindset conceptual model was applied to a sample of 163 leaders who work in positions that require international activities in organizations in 22 economic segments in Africa, Asia, South and North America, Europe, and the Middle East. The results indicate that global mindset is responsible for 39.1 percent of the variability of leadership behavior, confirming previous studies, which have identified that global leaders with high scores of global mindsets are more likely to exhibit leadership behaviors with the understanding of differences across cultures and countries in response to the global environment. The results confirmed previous studies, indicating that demographic and organizational factors affect the global mindset of leaders. Specifically related to demographic factors such as age, gender, the number of foreign languages spoken, the number of countries worked in, and being raised or living in a bilingual or multiethnic family, the results show that they did not affect the global mindset score, unlike place of employment and position. Finally, regarding organizational factors, the influence of the total number of employees, the percentage of employees working abroad, and location of headquarters on the global mindset score was weak. On the other hand, products lines and percentage of revenue from foreign operations significantly affected business leaders’ global mindset.