Johnny Hellgren, Ph D, Stockholm University, Dept of Psychology
Jouko Arvonen, Ph D, Arvonen International AB/ Stockholm University, Dept of Psychology
Maarten du Plessis, Director and Management Consultant , Du Plessis Consultant.
Ebben von Zyl, Professor, Department of Industrial Psychology, First State University
Background and purpose
The power of Africa and its' long term impact on global markets and economies is only beginning to surface and be understood by the world, which will increase the pressure on leaders and the complexity of leading businesses in Africa in the years to come. In June 2010, Mckinsey's Global Institute published a report, "Lions on the move: The Progress and Potential of African Economies" where they highlight the following:
- Consumer growth will be two to three times faster than those countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
- Africa has 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land.
- Increased infrastructure development, Africa's infrastructure projects represents 13 percent of the emerging market total and the need remain huge. They anticipate $46 billion per year will be required to meet infrastructure development needs up to 2020.
- The increased global demand for Africa's resources, oil, gas and minerals will continue to grow, with increased returns for the continent.
- By 2040 Africa will be home to 25 percent of the planets' young people and will have the world's largest working age population.
- The rate of return on foreign investment in Africa is higher than in any developing region
As Africa's economy become more enticing and closely tied to the international economy, it is impossible to discuss management theory without some acknowledgement of the impact of leadership and cross-cultural contingencies. A management practice that works quite effectively in the United States or Europe might have disastrous results for a plant in Africa and vice versa. The increasingly diverse nature of our already diverse workforces within the African boundries compels us to examine and identify the context of future leadership requirements in the workplace.
The purpose of the current project formulating and implementing a leadership development framework for future leaders by studying current leaders in Southern Africa to determine the context of and relationship between leadership style and positive effects for organisations and to democracy development. When the framework is developed it will be implemented in Southern Africa organisations. This implementation will be done by a research network connected to universities and other professional consultants in Southern Africa. These people in the network will be educated and trained by the project staff. The results and effects of the implementation in organisations will be evaluated in the end of the project period.
Relationship to other similar projects
In more recent works, writers have renewed and built on older theories. The contemporary leadership theory recognizes the more charismatic orientation and pinpoints the development of people in the organisation as well as the customer perspective. This is documented in publications like: Good to Great (Collins, 2001), Leadership Lessons from Emperor Shaka Zulu (Madi, 2000), The DNA of Leadership (Glaser, 2006), The Spirit of African Leadership (Mbigi, 2005), The Character of Leadership (Sarros et al, 2006), Launching a Leadership Revolution (Brady & Woodward, 2007), The History of Management Thought (George, 1972), and change-oriented leader behaviour (Arvonen, 2002, 2009).
The model provides the basis of leadership theory, and it can be assumed that leaders in general should possess some of the traits and behaviours, while excellent leaders should possess all of the traits and behaviours at various levels of competence. Ekvall and Arvonen (Arvonen, 2009) have developed a behavioural model which includes the three dimensions "production/structure", "employee/relation" and "change/development". An analysis of data from 13 countries revealed main combinations/profiles of these. The authors conclude that the dimensions are internally independent. The authors consider it reasonable to conclude that a manager has to be orientated in all three dimensions to be successful.
In a study (Ekvall, 2005) the impact of national and business culture upon perceptions of leadership style was analysed through in-depth interviews with managers from Sweden and China. The conclusions from the study are that there are differences in preferred leadership style between managers from Sweden and China and between employees from the two countries. One result of the study was that the Chinese managers and employees rated the production centred style as more important than the Swedish respondents. The results of the study indicate that both elements of national and business culture are linked to perceptions of leadership style. The influence of State Owned Enterprises and the political system together with the face culture appeared to be significant for the Chinese leadership culture. The Swedish management style appeared to be influenced primarily by the consensus and equality culture of Swedish society (comp Lindell & Arvonen, 1994).
According to Hofstede, national culture is deeply rooted values and beliefs in a society that affects behaviour and it can be defined as "the collective mental programming of the people in an environment" (Hofstede, 1980). Hofstede identified five dimensions for describing common elements within a national culture and he argues that countries can be depicted on cultural maps based on these dimensions Hofstede's cultural dimensions are widely applied in research. This indicates that the theory has predictive validity.
In addition to cultural context, managerial behavioural traits of the leaders are also included in the preliminary model. We use the term emotional intelligence, which is a relatively newly defined sub-construct of personality. The field of emotional intelligence was first introduced in Daniel Goleman's 1996 book, which was influenced by the earlier work of Salavoy & Mayer (2004). Emotional intelligence can be defined as the ability to understand and express emotion, use emotion in thought, to perceive and reason with emotion and to regulate emotion in self and others. Emotion is your own personal measurement tool that guides your choices and drives and inspires certain behaviours. Emotional intelligence is a known sub-construct of personality. Furthermore by interpreting McAdams's five principles that define an integrated approach to personality and the analysis of leadership traits and emotional intelligence, it can be assumed that it is a sub-construct of personality.
Personality trait theory has privileged status among personality researchers and an increasingly prominent role in studies done in social, developmental, cultural, and clinical psychology (Matthews et al., 2003). This is enhanced by the scientific standing of traits today as a result of the widespread acceptance of the five-factor model of personality, often called the Big Five (Costa & McCrae, 1994; Goldberg, 1993; John & Srivastava, 1999). The Big Five organize broad individual differences in social and emotional life into five factor-analytically-derived categories, most commonly labelled extraversion (vs. introversion), neuroticism (negative affectivity), conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience. The five fundamental principles as defined by McAdams provide a broad outline to make psychological sense of the context of individual personality. This study will examine personality as defined in Dan McAdams' Big Five.
Both fields of study of personality and behaviour in the leadership theory are well developed and formulated through empirical studies over many years, as see in the literature. This study will use that knowledge in order to establish the commonalities in the sub-constructs of personality, leadership traits, behaviour and the interrelationship between them in excellent leaders in Southern Africa. This information will be used to develop a new development framework for future Southern African Leaders.
Project plan
Given the broad scope of the study, the project will be complex and will be made up of several stages as follows:
The project will be started by a planning meeting in the beginning of 2011. The project staff will have a meeting in SA at the Bloemfontein University and in Johannesburg University to work out the schedule in more detail. We will ensure the commitment of local partners and also be interviewing the potential consultant and Organisation/company representatives. We will also drive the development of the leadership concept for SA by interviewing 'successful' managers in SA organisations. These interviews will involve university students and consultants, who will use the standards qualitative questionnaire.
The consultant network will be established during the first part of the 2011 and will include about 20 professional consultants and about 20 university people with degrees (at Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town). During the second part of 2011 we will analyse the interviews in workshops and operationalise the model that is suitable and applicable for the SA context. A measurement tool has to be developed on the basis of the interviews. We will also educate and train the consultant network regarding the leadership model and how to practice leadership development in companies and organizations. This includes learning the role of consultant and how to do field research and development in organisations. One concrete part of the project is to include the leadership concept and development framework in formal courses of human resources management at the Bloemfontein University. The project staff will be involved in that course.
In the first part of the year 2012 the local projects of leadership development projects will start in local organisations. That includes both assessment of the leaders and also giving them feedback and making action plans for their development. Every consultant in the network of about 40 consultants has at least one manager to work with. The project staff will have workshops with the consultants to tutor them and give them advice as to how to implement the action plans for each individual manager.
During 2013 the project team will evaluate the effects of training the managers and the leadership concept we have implemented. This will be done by means of analysing the data we have gathered from the managers in training and validating the model statistically. The validation is also done in the workshop we arrange with the consultations. The result of this will be partly renewed concept of leadership in SA context. In the second part of 2013 the local partners and consultants will commence with local larger scale development projects and training courses concerning the development of successful SA leadership. The project staff will support the local partners.
No work permits need to be obtained as Mr Maarten du Plessis, the initiator of the research project, will co-ordinate all the aspects of securing participation and data collection in Southern Africa and he is a South African.
The following people will be involved and relationships have already been established with them as follows:
Mr. Maarten du Plessis, is the research initiator and a Management Consultant with 16 years of industry experience and 15 years consulting experience in Southern African industry. His clients are mainly large Mining and Manufacturing organisations, including some Government organisations. Maarten will also be the main person responsible for the consultant network and the research in Southern Africa.
Prof. Ebben van Zyl at the University of the Free State will be a technical academic advisor to the research project, functioning to support Maarten from a Southern African perspective. Prof. Van Zyl is a well know researcher and has published numerous articles and addressed seminars globally. He has also contacts with other universities in SA.
Preliminary results
Southern African Organisations often focus on leadership development, but using a first world approach without understanding the development context of the Southern African people and the complex multicultural relationships. Based on the project proposal it is anticipated that the project results will provide very broad results on the factors that influence the emergence of excellent leaders in Southern Africa. Because the research covers such a large area aspects like empowering people, managing multicultural work groups, creating new working conditions the impact on people development and developing future leaders cannot be measured only in monetary terms. It is known that leaders have a significant impact on followers and moulding the personality development of future leaders on current successful leaders, can herald significant results for the Southern African countries and their future in a global economy. Africa is known for its spikes in leadership brilliance, e.g. Nelson Mandela, but it is anticipated that this study will assist with developing a good source of future leaders.
As a result of the project we assume that following products will be established:
· Marketing the project in local media, like newspapers. Arrange meetings with local government representatives.
· Establishing an internet homepage (www.sa-leadership.com) for the project, in order to help internal and external communication. There we will provide news, reports, list of consultants, the possibility of interactive dialogue with other people; there will also be the tool available for assessment of leaders.
· Establishing the SA leadership based on the project experiences at the University courses. This will be done first at Bloemfontein and later the course will be introduced at Johannesburg University. This will be done by Professor Ebben van Zyl.
· Establish a course for consultant training in organisational and in management training. Based on the experience how to lead a consultant network and also based on the leadership concept we developed.
· A qualitative report based on the preliminary interviews will be published. This report will be published and presented for local HR-people, managers and politicians.
· A validating report regarding the leadership model. Statistical analysis of the dimensions of SA leadership model/concept, differences between gender, effective and successful managers. The criteria for being a successful manager will be not only the economic result but also empowering employees and creating positive change for employees and changing working conditions and working schedules.
· Development of the 360 degree measuring tool for assessing leaders. This instrument will be available to the SA organisations. The project will also establish a database, which can be used to analyse managerial behaviour and differences between genders for instance.
· A number of students' papers will be produced. Based on interviews and analysing the quantitative data. And also evaluating the management training effects.
· Certifying local consultants in leadership development tools.
· A number of workshops in the network that will continue after project ended.
Collaboration will be with parents, teachers, organisations and possibly other psychologist/professionals to impart or assist with the application of the training interventions to create awareness, and to assist with the development of people across various age groups.
Arvonen, J. (2002). Change, production, and employees - an integrated model of leadership. Department of Psychology, Stockholm University. (Doctoral Dissertation)
Arvonen, Jouko (2009). Change-oriented leadership behaviour: A consequence of post-bureaucratic organizations pp. 302-316. In Rickards, T., Runco, M.A., and Moger, S., (2009) The Routledge Companion to Creativity, Routledge, Oxford, UK and New York
Brady, C & Woodward, O (2007). Launching a Leadership Revolution. New York: Business
Collins, J (2001). Good to Great. Sydney: Random House Business Books.
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1994). Set like plaster? Evidence for the stability of adult personality. In T. F. Heatherton & J. L. Weinberger (Eds.), Can personality change? (pp. 21-40). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Den Hartog, D. N, House, R J, Hanges, P J, Ruiz-Quintanilla, S A, Dorfman, P W, & 170 co-authors (1999). 'Culture specific and cross-culturally generalizable implicit leadership theories: Are attributes of charismatic/transformational leadership universally endorsed?'. Leadership Quarterly 10(2):219-56.
Ekvall, Emilie. (2005). A Comparison of Leadership in Sweden and China. - Qualitative and quantitative analysis. De Montfort University. Leicester Business School
Georg, C S, Jr. (1972). The History of Management Thought. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Glaser, J E (2006). The DNA of Leadership. Avaon: Platinum Press.
Goldberg, L. R. (1993). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. American Psychologist, 48, 26-34.
Hofstede, G. (1980) Motivation, leadership and organization: do american theories of organization apply abroad, in D. S. Pugh, Organization Theory. Selected Readings, Penguin Books, London.
John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102-138). New York: Guilford Press.
Lindell, M., & Arvonen, J. (1994). The Nordic Management Style in a European Context. International Studies of Management and Organizations, Vol 26, No. 3, 1997
Madi, P. M (2000). Leadership lessons from Emperor Shaka Zulu. Randburg: Knowledge Resources.
Matthews, G. Deary, I. J. & Whiteman, M. C. (2003). Personality traits (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Mbigi, L (2005). The Spirit of African Leadership. Randburg: Knowledge Resources
McAdams & Pals (2006). A New Big Five - Fundamental Principles for an Integrative Science of Personality. American Psychologist, Vol. 61, No. 3, 204-217, April 2006.
Salavoy, Brackett & Mayer (2004). Emotional Intelligence: Key Readings on the Mayor and Salovey Model. New York: Dude Publishing.
Sarros J. C, Cooper B K, Hartican A M & Barker C J (2006). The Character of Leadership. Milton, Queensland: John Wiley & Sons.
Popular science description
This project is aimed to develop future leaders for companies and organizations in Southern-Africa countries (SA). In SA there are huge natural resources, a growing amount of young people but also poverty, a lot of low-skilled workers, gender and race differences. The SA is highly multicultural countries, with different language, religions and provinces. We assume that the leadership at all level has an important role in the transition from underdeveloped countries to the level of democracy, equality and welfare. We don't aim to import western leadership models; we are convinced that in the SA countries there will be strong cultural and social factors that have to be included in the leadership concept. The project objectives are to interview leaders/professionals and gain knowledge about good leaders. From that point we are starting a network at the universities and a consultant network. These people in networks will be educated in the SA leadership and trained to run development projects in local organizations. Our role as researchers is to give SA cooperation partners support, advice and tools to work with the development in organizations. The project is running during three-year period and after that the local partners are continuing to implement the knowledge and tools. In order to communicate the project status there will be a homepage on Internet.
Why this project is important for SA
African countries are known for their ups and dramatic downs in leadership and are applicable in both government and public organizations. The main purpose of the project is to improve leadership competence across a spectrum of spheres including public organizations, educational institutions, government organizations and even parents in order develop leadership competence. There is will facilitate the development of future leaders and empower them to lead in a complex multi-cultural environment, to foster and drive the values of those they lead within their personal or business leadership framework. It is anticipated that the imparted leadership skills and knowledge will enable effective empowerment of employees, working and valuing a democratic society, and to create equality between gender and race. In order to create stabilized democracies, it is important that the future leaders are able to understand the need and culture of the people they lead to be able to create commonly strived objectives and goals fostering the principles of the African culture. This will enable leaders to integrate business and social culture to create equilibrium of common values/culture to increase organizational efficiency and to create equality between gender and race. In order to increase the welfare of people in Southern Africa it is important to focus leadership development around the creation of a culture or need for continuous development. The future leaders can make this possible by involving both in social, organizational and economic development principles to lead organizations
Describe the gender perspective
In the traditional Southern African perspective tremendous inequality exits, not only from a race perspective, but significantly so in relation towards women and minority ethnic groups. South African women are still not represented correctly in leadership positions and the leadership development project will facilitate the development of women to become leaders in the future. The project aim to involve women and men on an equal basis, both as facilitators and trainers of the leadership development model.
Project relevance for a developing country
Southern African organizations are often not as productive as they should be, mainly as a result of workers in generally being underdeveloped, and a massive cultural gap that need to be bridged between the leaders, which in most cases are viewed as first world leaders, and their third world subordinates. The development and success of future leaders are directly linked to establishing a culture that will facilitate the union of multiple cultures to create common values, objectives and drives. The leadership development project will ensure the development of a unique Southern African based leadership model and not the transfer of western leadership values.