The Role of a Cosmopolitan Manager in Effecting Change: Insights from Kenyan Organizations

Abstract

Organizational Change in Kenyan organizations has been manifested in form of investments by the developed world and internationalization of activities that calls for modern approaches to production and provision of services.  Organizational managers are faced with unpresented challenges of actualizing organizational goals and objectives. Most especially, for the basic reason that businesses operate in dynamic environments that influences the level of operations and processes. In order, to cope with these underlying pressures, managers ought to have the requisite knowledge, skills, and experience that will enable them to effectively understand and improve the success of an organization. Managers are expected to have a good understanding of their business environment as well as the corporate culture of their organizations. However, it is empirical that the managers not only need to understand the environment, but should also be self driven and prepared to manage diversity. The identity of a cosmopolitan is beyond the local context since cosmopolitan managers ought to have the needed expertise and experience of managing human resources both within and beyond borders. For example, the effective management of expatriates and introduction of change programmes in the organization.  This paper examines the role of managers in managing a multicultural environment and even the setbacks experienced by managers in managing multinational corporations.

Key words: Cosmopolitan, Culture, Environment, Challenge, Urbanization, Globalization