Northern European Leadership in Transition – a Survey of the Insurance Industry

Abstract

What kind of leadership is needed in the companies of the future in the deregulated Northern European countries? The main goal of the study is to find out what kind of leadership attributes will be required by effective North European managers in the future. The approach of Northern European leaders and the owners of companies could perhaps be summarised as a situation of “balanced countervailing powers”, where both owners and managers have strong relative power to debate and challenge each other. It is evident that the leadership qualities of typical US leaders cannot directly be transposed to the leadership style of Nordic managers. Nordic leaders would have scope to enhance monitoring, optimise all the resources of the company better and review work more efficiently, whilst preserving a reasonable level of social responsibility and the national/cultural norms of the country. Nordic managers could also do more to create a better climate of co-operation and mutual assistance around them. Previous cross-cultural studies (e.g. Hofstede, 1984 and the GLOBE study, 2004) support the findings of the present study. The study suggests that the social safety net of the welfare state ideology has so far shielded the culture-specific sense of social responsibility of Northern European managers from the hazards of free competition and globalisation.