| Course | EDO 818 Leading Across Contexts and Cultures |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 1 |
| Paper type | Doctoral culture and leadership essay |
| Length | About 1,063 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Aspen University |
| Program | Doctor of Education |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for EDO 818 Module 1
Three Plants, Three Pictures of a Good Boss: Culture and Leadership at a Water Filtration Company With Sites in Minnesota, Brno and Penang
Student Name
Doctor of Education Program, Aspen University
EDO 818: Leading Across Contexts and Cultures
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Three Plants, Three Pictures of a Good Boss: Culture and Leadership at a Water Filtration Company With Sites in Minnesota, Brno and Penang
Clearbrook Water Systems, an invented manufacturer of water filtration equipment, was founded in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1984. For most of its history it was a one-site company. In 2021 it acquired a filter cartridge plant in Brno, Czech Republic, with 240 employees, and in 2023 it opened a membrane assembly plant in Penang, Malaysia, with 180. Within a year of the Penang opening, Clearbrook's leaders noticed that the same management practices produced different results at each site. A weekly open-forum meeting that Minnesota staff valued drew silence in Penang; a flexible approach to quality procedures that worked in Saint Paul unsettled engineers in Brno. This paper examines how culture shapes leadership at Clearbrook. The company, its sites and its people are invented, and national tendencies are treated as averages that individuals depart from.
Two Levels of Culture
Culture operates at more than one level. National culture refers to the values, beliefs and practices shared, on average, by members of a society. Organizational culture refers to those shared within a company. The two interact: a company carries assumptions from the society where it was founded, and its employees bring their own societies' assumptions to work.
Schein (2017) pictured a company's culture as layered. On the surface sit the things anyone can observe: how offices are arranged, how meetings run, what people wear. Beneath them lie the strategies, goals and philosophies the company states about itself. At the bottom lie assumptions so taken for granted that members rarely notice them, and these, Schein argued, are what actually steer behavior. Leaders, in Schein's account, create, embed and change culture, but the deepest level is the hardest to see from inside.
National Culture and Its Dimensions
Hofstede (2011) retold how his model of national culture grew from attitude surveys at a single computer company's subsidiaries around the world and identified dimensions on which national cultures differ, among them power distance, how far people with less power in a society expect and accept that power is spread unevenly; individualism versus collectivism; uncertainty avoidance, how uncomfortable a society's members tend to be with situations that are unclear or unstructured; and others added later. He emphasized that the dimensions describe societies, not individuals, and that country scores are relative positions useful for comparison, not fixed traits of every person in a country.
In Hofstede's data, Malaysia has been among the societies highest in power distance, while the United States scores much lower. The Czech Republic scores higher than the United States on uncertainty avoidance. These differences are averages and say nothing certain about any particular engineer in Brno or technician in Penang.
Shared Theories of Good Leadership
House et al. (2002) introduced the GLOBE project, a large research program on culture and leadership involving researchers in dozens of societies. The project built on the idea of implicit leadership theories, the beliefs people hold about the attributes that distinguish effective leaders, and proposed that members of a culture share such theories, which GLOBE called culturally endorsed implicit leadership theories. People who see a leader acting in line with their shared theory tend to accept and follow that leader. The project measured both cultural practices and values in societies and sought to relate them to the leadership attributes that each society endorsed, identifying some attributes seen as effective nearly everywhere and others whose desirability varied with culture.
What a Good Manager Does at Each Site
To ground the comparison, the human resources team asked employees at all three sites, in interviews and an open-ended survey question, what a good manager at Clearbrook does.
The comparison fits the research without proving it. Penang's preference for decisions made by the manager after private consultation, and for disagreement raised privately, is consistent with higher power distance. Brno's emphasis on precise procedures fits higher uncertainty avoidance. Within each site, however, views varied: younger Penang engineers trained abroad asked for more open debate, and several Brno managers valued flexibility. Minnesota itself was not uniform; production staff on the second shift described a good manager in terms closer to Brno's than to the office staff's, valuing clear procedures and fair scheduling over open debate. Site averages, in other words, conceal differences by role, age and experience that matter as much as nationality.
| Theme | Minnesota | Brno | Penang |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decisions | Invites debate, then decides | Decides on technical grounds and explains the reasoning | Decides, after quietly consulting senior staff |
| Disagreement | Expected in meetings | Expected in writing or one to one | Raised privately, rarely in public |
| Procedures | Flexible if results are good | Followed precisely; changes formally approved | Followed as the manager directs |
| Care for the team | Respect for work-life balance | Fairness and stability | Personal attention, including to family events |
| Competence | Business judgment | Technical expertise above all | Experience and seniority |
The Company's Own Assumptions
Clearbrook's culture, built in Minnesota over forty years, carries its own assumptions at the deepest of Schein's layers: that good ideas come from open argument, that results matter more than procedure and that managers should be approachable equals. These assumptions show up in artifacts such as the open-forum meeting and in espoused values such as speak up. In Minnesota they feel natural. At the other sites they read differently: the open forum asks Penang staff to disagree in public with a manager, and flexible procedures look careless to engineers in Brno.
Implications for a Leader
Three implications follow. First, a leader should separate Clearbrook's core values, safety, quality and respect for people, from the practices through which Minnesota expresses them. The values can be shared across sites; the practices may need to differ. Second, decision routines should be adapted: in Penang, input can be gathered privately or in small groups before decisions; in Brno, changes to procedure should go through a documented approval step. Third, a leader should avoid stereotyping by asking individuals how they prefer to work, since the site averages hide wide variation.
Conclusion
Culture shapes what employees at each Clearbrook site expect of a good manager. House and colleagues explain how societies share theories of effective leadership, Hofstede's dimensions offer comparisons with careful limits and Schein shows how the company's own Minnesota assumptions travel with its practices. Leading across the three sites requires keeping values consistent while adapting the practices that express them.
References
Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing cultures: The Hofstede model in context. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1014
House, R., Javidan, M., Hanges, P., & Dorfman, P. (2002). Understanding cultures and implicit leadership theories across the globe: An introduction to project GLOBE. Journal of World Business, 37(1), 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-9516(01)00069-4
Schein, E. H. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Wiley.
What the EDO 818 Module 1 instructions ask for
EDO 818 opens with culture and leadership, and the first paper usually asks doctoral students to explain how culture shapes leadership and to apply that understanding to an organization working across borders. The Module 1 page in your Aspen classroom comes first; Clearbrook is invented. Define culture at the national and organizational levels. Explain how culture shapes expectations of leaders, using major research programs. Compare expectations across real or described sites. Separate what national culture explains from what organizational culture explains. Draw implications for a leader working across the sites. Reference every study in APA 7 style, and prefer the researchers' own reports to textbook summaries.
Inside the EDO 818 Module 1 example
Clearbrook employs 1,100 people: 680 in Minnesota, 240 in Brno and 180 in Penang. House and colleagues (Journal of World Business) supply the GLOBE idea that members of a culture share implicit theories of effective leadership. Hofstede (Online Readings in Psychology and Culture) supplies his comparisons of societies on how they handle inequality and ambiguity, with his warning against reading them as personal traits. Schein's Organizational Culture and Leadership supplies three levels of company culture. A table compares interviews and survey comments from each site on what a good manager does: Minnesota staff valued open debate, Brno staff valued technical competence and clear procedures and Penang staff valued a manager who looks after the team and makes decisions. The analysis shows Clearbrook's own culture, built in Minnesota, carried assumptions that read differently at each site. Implications include adapting decision routines while keeping shared values.
Where the marks sit in the EDO 818 Module 1 rubric
Doctoral culture essays earn credit when frameworks are presented accurately, applied with care and used to say something specific about leadership. This example separates national from organizational culture and uses GLOBE, Hofstede and Schein for what each does best. It compares expectations at three sites with evidence from the company rather than relying only on national scores. The paper avoids stereotypes by treating national tendencies as averages and by showing variation within sites. Its implications distinguish what a leader should adapt from what should stay consistent, which is the practical question this course builds on.
Common EDO 818 Module 1 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Culture papers often apply national scores to individuals, as if every person in a country shared the average. Treat dimensions as tendencies of societies and look for variation. Another common weakness is ignoring organizational culture, which can reinforce or counter national patterns. Use evidence from the organization, such as interviews, surveys or observed practices, alongside national research. Present frameworks from their sources, including their limits. Avoid simple advice to adapt to local culture; say what should adapt, what should not and why. Finally, connect the analysis to leadership behavior, the focus of the course. Name at least one practice you would change at each site and one you would keep everywhere, with the reason for each.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Aspen University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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EDO 818 Module 1 questions, answered
What does EDO 818 Module 1 usually ask for?
Aspen's EDO 818 begins with culture and leadership, so explaining how culture shapes leadership and applying it to an organization working across borders is typical. Read your Module 1 prompt.
What is the GLOBE project?
A research program, introduced by House and colleagues, that studied culture and leadership in dozens of societies and found shared beliefs about effective leaders.
Can Hofstede's dimensions describe individuals?
Hofstede cautioned that his dimensions describe national societies, not individual people, who vary widely within any culture.
Where can I find a free EDO 818 Module 1 sample paper?
Free, on this page: a doctoral essay on culture and leadership at an invented water filtration company with sites in Minnesota, Brno and Penang.
What are Schein's levels of organizational culture?
Three layers running from what a visitor can see, through what the company says it values, down to beliefs so taken for granted that members rarely notice them.