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As the world struggled to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, over twenty scholars, practitioners, and global leaders wrote brief essays for this curated chapter on the role of global leadership in this extreme example of a global crisis. Their thoughts span helpful theoretical breakthroughs to essential, pragmatic adaptations by companies.

In this section, we offer a careful and systematic review of the theoretical and empirical studies relating to global mindset that have been published in books and peer-reviewed journals. This review includes studies that use differing terms to refer to the idea of global mindset but consider the same general concept. At the same time, we exclude studies that do not specifically pertain to global mindset but concentrate on such areas as global leadership, expatriates, and expatriation, even though they may focus on similar underlying themes found in the global mindset literature. We then identify two fundamental themes in the global mindset literature – cosmopolitanism and cognitive complexity – and use these concepts to develop a new integrative approach to global mindset.

Cosmopolitanism represents a complex, multilevel, multilayer phenomenon manifested in a variety of social spheres, including moral, political, social, and cultural. Yet, despite its prominence in other disciplines, cosmopolitanism has received relatively scant attention in international management research. Furthermore, the understanding of cosmopolitanism as an ever-present social condition in which individuals are embedded lags significantly behind.

In this chapter, we develop a conceptual framework for cosmopolitanism as an individual-level phenomenon situated at the intersection of the moral, political, and sociocultural perspectives. The framework explicates the interrelations between macrolevel dynamics and individual experiences in a globalized world. We conceptualize cosmopolitanism as an individual disposition manifested and enacted through identities, attitudes, and practices. We also highlight the diversity of individuals who can be considered cosmopolitans, including those who may not possess the classic cosmopolitan CV. Finally, the chapter explores the implications of cosmopolitanism for global organizations and global leadership.

This paper explores the empirical relationships between the global orientation of the top management team, geocentrism of the staffing and promotion system, and boundary spanning structures and processes with the individual outcome variables of employee commitment to, and excitement about, their job and organization in ten units of two highly diversified high-technology Japanese multinational corporations. The results from the study show that employee perceptions of the top management team’s global orientation, geocentrism, and boundary spanning structures and processes influence individual attitudes of employees in Japanese MNCs. The implications of these results for further research and managerial practice are discussed.

The authors of the various chapters in this book have approached the concept of global mindset from diverse perspectives and have defined it differently. Levy et al. in this volume define global mindset as a highly complex cognitive structure distinguished by an openness to and expression of multiple cultural and strategic realities on both global and local levels and the cognitive capacity to moderate and assimilate across this diversity. More specifically, global mindset is typified by three corresponding dimensions: (1) an openness and attentiveness to multiple realms of action and meaning, (2) a complex representation and expression of cultural and strategic dynamics, and (3) a moderation and incorporation of ideals and actions oriented toward both global and local levels (Chapter 1 of this volume). At the core of their definition is the awareness of and openness to multiple realities, meanings, and perspectives.

In this concluding chapter, we discuss insights and reflections from our invited contributions on the COVID-19 pandemic and derive areas of meaningful future research to advance the global leadership domain. Specifically, we call for (1) strengthening the link of the global leadership domain with related research fields, (2) expanding our view on what are necessary global leadership competencies, (3) moving beyond individual global leadership toward a more collective and collaborative understanding of the phenomenon, (4) further enhancing the growing field of responsible global leadership, (5) examining the various competing tensions that global leaders need to balance, and (6) engaging in greater reflexivity among global leadership scholars ourselves.