RECKONING WITH POWER: WHY DISTANCE MATTERS IN THE AGE OF AI AND GLOBAL DISRUPTION

Abstract The author is Founder & President of the global consultancy Eunomia Risk Advisory. She writes: “Leaders must understand how power operates beneath the surface: how it’s signaled, challenged, and interpreted across borders and teams.” There is a discussion of the Power Distance Index (PDI), developed in the 1970s by Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede. She says that power dynamics “shape how organizations: launch new technologies and systems; handle ethical breaches and compliance failures; receive feedback—or fail to get it; and build or lose institutional trust.” She describes how “The GLOBE Project (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness)‐a multi‐decade, cross‐cultural study involving managers in over 60 countries, builds on Hofstede’s foundational work that Power Distance directly shapes leadership expectations.” She writes about how artificial intelligence/AI can play out in high and low‐PDI cultures: “an AI tool can be ethically designed, but if it ignores cultural dynamics, it will fail functionally. Leadership must not only govern how AI is implemented, but also how its authority is communicated—and contested.” Finally, she discusses her tool “The POWER Scan TM : A Framework for Culturally Fluent Leadership.”