Latin America

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela

The GLOBE Latin America cluster consists of the largest number of countries of all the GLOBE clusters. It includes Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Mexico. The societies belonging to this cluster are unique from most other clusters, reflecting relatively high scores of the societal cultural practices dimensions of In-Group Collectivism and Power Distance. Overall, these societies maintain close family ties and individuals express pride and loyalty in organizations and family. Members of these societies do not expect power to be distributed evenly among citizens, instead accepting authority, power differentials, status privileges, and social inequality. Its scores are relatively low on several other dimensions including Future Orientation, Institutional Collectivism, and Uncertainty Avoidance. The dimensions of Humane Orientation and Gender Egalitarianism are about average. Performance Orientation is among the lowest score in comparison to other clusters. Interestingly, the Latin American countries score high on In- Group Collectivism while scoring lowest on Institutional Collectivism. The high In-Group collectivism scores suggest that they generally express pride and cohesiveness in their families and organizations. They however, do not strongly endorse societal institutional practices with the goals of collective distribution of resources or rewards.

Latin American cluster values (what the society believes should be) are striking and often considerably different from the current practices. These countries desire to be much more Performance and Future-Oriented and have goals to achieve higher levels of Gender Egalitarianism and Institutional Collectivism. The latter indicates a desire to encourage a more collective distribution of resources and is the highest score among clusters for this dimension. The high levels of current In- Group Collectivism (practices) are also mirrored in even higher In-Group Collectivism values scores for this dimension (the highest score of all clusters). They also desire to have much lower levels of Power Distance (among the lowest of all clusters) and prefer to be slightly lower on Assertiveness (dominance and toughness). Overall, the societal culture of the Latin America cluster is highly group and family oriented and individuals feel pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations and families. These societies accept and endorse authority, power differences, and status privileges and exhibit about average male domination. However, they desire to be much more future oriented with a more equal distribution of power and gender equity.

In the Latin American cluster, leadership dimensions viewed as contributing the most to outstanding leadership include Charismatic/Value-Based and Team-Oriented Leadership, followed by Participative and Humane-Oriented Leadership dimensions. The Latin American cluster has the highest rank of all clusters on Team-Oriented Leadership and the second highest rank for Charismatic Leadership. Charismatic attributes that are endorsed include a realistic vision, high performance orientation, integrity, and decisiveness. Team-oriented leaders’ characteristics include developing outstanding teams by using their administrative and interpersonal skills to create cohesive working groups. Conversely, it ranks the lowest on the Autonomous Leadership suggesting that these societies reject autonomous leaders who act independently and alone. Compared to the other GLOBE clusters, the Latin American cluster’s ranking for Self-Protective leaders is relatively high indicating that maintaining safety and security is considered critical, as is the necessity for face- saving when needed. For the other dimensions, the cluster’s rankings for Participative and Humane-Oriented Leadership dimensions remain about average in comparison to other clusters. Overall, the profile of an outstanding Latin American leader would be someone who is highly charismatic, visionary, team-oriented but only moderately participative.