Critical leader behaviour in the emerging South African economy

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Leadership is, without a doubt, one of the most valuable commodities in business. It is no secret that organisations depend greatly on leaders for their success, and that the effectiveness of the organisation is related to the effectiveness of its leaders. Organisations worldwide are continuously searching for the finest leaders to organise and lead their organisation to optimal performance.However, leadership is much more complex than initially meets the eye. A great many researchers have conducted decades of research on the topic and have not yielded irrefutable evidence on leadership. Although research has succeeded in defining different types of leadership and leader influencing, and power tactics, the characteristics, behaviour and situational factors of effective leadership are still under contention. The phenomenal complexity and elusive character of the leadership construct should be considered as a problem whose resolution would greatly enrich our knowledge. For social and organisational psychologists, understanding leadership, its behaviours and processes, forms a fundamental, if not chief element of group and organisational processes. These processes can arguably lead to group, and thus organisational effectiveness.In this study, leadership is explored from the basis of social learning theory and focused specifically on South Africa's emerging economy. Bandura, the founder of social learning theory, advocates that people learn their behaviour by observing those who are superior and desirable to them, and then imitate their behaviour. According to this theory, leaders have a very direct effect on the behaviour of their subordinates, which enables them to mould employee behaviour by being a good role model. In addition, literature on leadership has corroborated that role modelling is one of the most effective influencers on employee behaviour. This study attempts to uncover which leadership behaviours is conducive to organisational effectiveness. This information can be useful to all other potential or current leaders in the South African economy, and the insights gained from the study can be used as a valuable framework from which they can lead their organisations through their own behaviour.The objective of this research project is thus to come to a deeper understanding of what the critical leadership behaviour in the emerging South African economy looks like. Through acknowledging the complexity of human behaviour and the leadership construct we want to comprehend what behaviour it is that makes leaders successful. Individual, in-depth interviews with a number of South Africa's most successful business leaders is seemingly the best method of uncovering what these 'effective leader behaviours' are. These interviews create an understanding of how successful leaders view leadership and what behaviour they (as the experts on leadership behaviour) deem important.The repertory grid interview technique is utilised in this qualitative study, to uncover how these leaders perceive leadership. This is an attempt at coming closer to understanding what the cunning logic of nature's design looks like, in terms of effective leader behaviour.This study focuses on South Africa in the current emerging economy, and aims at providing insights into the specific leader behaviour that is conducive to organisational effectiveness. These insights can be used as a starting point from which leaders can cultivate their own behaviour to mould a desired organisational culture, and reach organisational objectives.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University