Indeed Yero, leadership is definitely not about beautiful feathers. Thank
you.

Baba

On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Y Jallow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Mawdo Baba, nice read and great substance. I like the conclusion. I read
> few books on leadership and the subject matter of its theory is far from
> what we see daily. Leadership is for those to be served. It shouldn't be
> about more colorful feathers, etc..warm regards, Yero
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2014 09:46:41 -0600
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: African Leadership Studies: Beyond Theoretical Exceptionalism
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Thank you Boss Karim. I continue to salute my boss!
>
> Baba
>
> On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 2:40 AM, abdoukarim sanneh <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> My Boss
> Thanks for sharing this body of knowledge. I continue to salute you amd
> regards to the family
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2014 18:00:05 -0800
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: African Leadership Studies: Beyond Theoretical Exceptionalism
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> *African Leadership Studies: Beyond Theoretical Exceptionalism*
>
> Paper presented at the 16th Annual International Leadership Association
> Conference
>
> October 30 – November 2, 2014 / San Diego California[1]
>
>
>
> *Baba G. Jallow, Creighton University, [log in to unmask]
> <[log in to unmask]>*
>
>
>
> Some scholars de-contextualize Africa’s leadership and developmental
> crises by attributing them to the mistaken and untested assumption that
> Western theories and styles of leadership are not appropriate for African
> and other non-Western cultures. Geert Hofstede (1993) has argued that
> Western theories and styles of leadership are not appropriate for
> non-Western cultures. Hofstede claims that this is so because leadership
> studies theorists grew up in particular environments that inevitably limit
> the applicability and utility of their concepts of leadership to other
> environments. This proposition represents a form of theoretical
> exceptionalism and diminishes the globalizing potential of leadership
> studies scholarship. In this paper, I propose to demonstrate that
> situational, transformational, transactional, servant and other theories of
> leadership may usefully be applied to the study of African leaders. Using
> Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, the former Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and South
> Africa’s Nelson Mandela as case studies, I argue that leadership studies
> theory is applicable to the study of leadership regardless of cultural
> idiosyncrasies. It is my contention that the problem lies not with the
> Western theories or styles of leadership per se, but with the nature of
> African leadership and the cultural context from which it emerges, within
> which it is embedded and within which it is exercised. Africa’s
> developmental failures reflect first and foremost a failure of leadership.
> And the theoretical exceptionalism that theories of leadership studies are
> not suitable tools of analysis for African leadership should be rejected in
> favor of experimentation.
>
> One may be forgiven for observing that the vast amount of leadership
> studies literature reads as if leadership exists only in the west.
> Leadership studies scholars’ preoccupation with their immediate
> environments and audiences obscures the presence of other environments and
> audiences equally invested in solving leadership problems in their
> communities. Organizations and managers are studied as if they only exist
> in western societies and remedies are suggested that are specifically
> designed to solve problems in western leadership and organizational
> cultures. The “we” we encounter in so many works on leadership studies
> often refers to “we” westerners, not we human beings. The University of San
> Diego’s Professor Bob Donmoyer speaks of a certain culture of “regionalism”
> in leadership studies that urgently needs to be addressed.[2] Not only is
> there a need for African leadership studies, Asian leadership studies,
> Latin American leadership studies and Middle Eastern leadership studies;
> western leadership studies scholars may find much that is useful in looking
> at other leadership and organizational cultures beyond their immediate
> spatial and academic environments.
>
> Leadership is a universal human process. It is found in all human
> societies. Since human beings are essentially similar in all the ways that
> really matter, it follows that theories used to understand and explain
> human motivation and behavior in one part of the world may be used to
> explain human motivation and behavior in other parts of the world. Of
> course, no theory of leadership may be applied wholesale in any part of the
> world without taking into due account human differences and cultural
> idiosyncrasies. But overall, we can safely argue that as valid
> generalizations on human nature, theories of leadership apply to their
> subjects regardless of spatial or temporal differences. Once created,
> knowledge becomes a universal artifact that recognizes no boundaries.
>
> Organizational culture and leadership theory lends itself particularly
> well to the study of leadership in Africa. Edgar Schein’s (2010) insights
> help us visualize the African nation-state as an organizational “macro
> culture” within which exist levels of organizational “micro cultures”.
> Schein suggests that understanding the “shared assumptions” of group
> members is key to resolving intra-organizational conflict and maintains
> that “leadership and culture are two sides of the same coin” (2010: 3).
> Both insights are useful to an understanding of African leadership
> cultures. Culture, Schein writes, “is ultimately created . . . by leaders”
> (2010: 3). The cultures of material poverty and political intolerance in
> contemporary Africa are no mere accidents of history; neither are they
> manifestations of inherent African backwardness; or lasting immutable
> effects of the colonial encounter. They are in fact created and nurtured by
> African leaders. The saying that a people gets the leadership it deserves
> may perhaps more usefully be rendered a people’s leadership determines the
> nature of the culture they get. Leadership cannot be divorced from its
> cultural context, just as culture cannot help but be shaped by leadership.
>
> Bolman and Deal speak of leaders as often incarcerated in a “psychic
> prison” that prevents them “from seeing old problems in a new light or
> finding more promising ways to work on perennial challenges” (2003: 7).
> This is a particularly useful insight into understanding the seemingly
> inscrutable antics of many post-colonial African leaders. Determined to
> hang on to power at all cost, many independent African leaders are
> perpetually in a state of denial; they claim progress and prosperity when
> their nations and people lack the barest necessities of life; they commit
> unspeakable crimes against their fellow citizens in the name of a national
> security that never was; they muzzle dissent and kill their opponents even
> while proclaiming their impeccable record of human rights and the rule of
> law. Bolman and Deal’s concept of the psychic prison might help us
> understand just why African leaders commit these crimes and break all rules
> of ethical behavior, often in broad daylight, before everyone’s eyes, and
> with a nonchalant attitude. African leaders of the post-colonial era often
> wield a “vision” in one hand and a club in the other. You either support
> them or shut up.
>
> Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first prime minister and president was, on the one
> hand, a successful nationalist and pan-African leader who led his country
> to independence, initiated a number of important development projects, and
> contributed to the process of decolonization across Africa. He did a lot to
> propagate the idea of a united Africa and was instrumental in the formation
> of the Organization of African Unity, now African Union in 1963. He
> initiated a lot of important domestic development projects that continue to
> benefit the people of Ghana to this day. On the other hand, however, he was
> a power wielder who systematically monopolized the Ghanaian political
> space, criminalized his political opponents, muzzled freedoms of
> expression, association and of the press, had himself declared president
> for life, and turned his newly independent country into a single-party
> dictatorship, thus stifling his people’s creative and developmental
> potentials. His immediate political legacy was a quarter century of
> political turmoil that saw a series of failed experiments in civilian and
> military leadership in Ghana.
>
> Nkrumah’s domestic policy actions suggest that Machiavellian leadership
> theory is a useful lens through which to understand his transition from a
> freedom-loving nationalist leader to the dictator of a single party state.
>  Between 1947 when he returned to Ghana (then called the Gold Coast) and
> 1966 when he was overthrown in a police-military coup, Nkrumah initiated a
> series of policy-action transformations that suggest the adoption of the
> twin Machiavellian personas of the lion and the fox. Let us illustrate:
>
> In 1947, Nkrumah accepted an invitation from the United Gold Coast
> Convention to return to Ghana knowing, as he admits in his autobiography,
> that he could not possibly work with what he called the convention’s
> “reactionary leadership.” He admits that he knew “it was quite useless to
> associate myself with a movement backed almost entirely by reactionaries,
> middle class lawyers, and merchants, for my revolutionary background and
> ideas would make it impossible for me to work with them” (Nkrumah 1957:
> 62). It could therefore be argued that he accepted the U.G.C.C’s invitation
> for Machiavellian reasons: to use the U.G.C.C. as a means of furthering his
> own political ambitions. He admits that he had his own plans and would not
> hesitate to pursue them whether the U.G.C.C. leadership liked it or not
> (Nkrumah 1957; Nugent 2009 - 2010). And that is exactly what he did.
>
> Europe’s subjugation of African territories during the periods of the
> scramble and pacification was often effected by a combination of force and
> cunning, of military might and fraudulent treaties of friendship and
> protection, of Machiavellian lion and fox tactics. African states that
> resisted colonial encroachment were forcefully subjugated and pacified,
> while occasionally, African leaders unwittingly signed away their
> sovereignty to European powers. In order to satisfy the requirements of the
> Berlin Act that came out of the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, European
> powers had to demonstrate effective claim to and occupation of African
> territories. This they did either by force or by producing written evidence
> of African sovereigns’ consent to submit to their protection or rule.
> Nkrumah translated these imperial strategies of force and fraud into his
> policies of Positive Action and Tactical Action, the former a show of
> nationalist muscle modeled on the Quit India campaign (Nugent 2009-2010),
> the latter a show of nationalist cunning to effect the final push against
> colonial domination. In deploying these two approaches, Nkrumah used the
> same Machiavellian Lion-Fox strategies to fight British imperialism that
> Britain used to subjugate Africans.
>
> Nkrumah’s twin policies of Positive Action and Tactical Action were in
> line with Machiavelli’s exhortation that the prince must be able to be both
> a lion and a fox. The prince, Machiavelli teaches, “must know that there
> are two kinds of combat; one with laws, the other with force. The first is
> proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is not often
> enough, one must have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for
> a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man” (Prince Ch. 18).
> And “since a prince is compelled by necessity to know well how to use the
> beast, he should pick the fox and the lion . . . one needs to be a fox to
> recognize snares and a lion to frighten the wolves” (Prince Ch. 18).
>
> From 1947 to 1949, Nkrumah played the fox to outsmart the U.G.C.C.
> leadership. From 1949 when he founded the C.P.P. to 1951 when he became
> Leader of Government Business, he played the lion through Positive Action.
> From 1951 to independence in 1957 he reverted to playing the fox through
> Tactical Action. Positive Action required him to seem tough and fearless as
> a lion in order to force the British government to grant internal
> self-government to the Gold Coast. Once internal self-government was
> achieved, he turned to Tactical Action, which he described as “a contest of
> wits” (Nkrumah 1957) in order to convince the British government that his
> party was capable of ruling the country. In typical Machiavellian fashion,
> Nkrumah tricked London into believing that he had abandoned his hostility
> toward imperialism, even though that was furthest from his mind. After
> independence in 1957, Nkrumah eased back into the lion persona and renewed
> his relentless onslaught against imperialism, neocolonialism, and those he
> considered their local agents and stooges in Ghana. His hostile
> anti-capitalist rhetoric did not deter Nkrumah from seeking financial
> assistance from the capitalist West in order to implement his most
> important development projects. Nkrumah was, in effect, a consummate
> Machiavellian.
>
> The Congolese scholar Jean-Claude Willame (1998) has identified
> Machiavellian tendencies in the politics of former Zaire (DRC) dictator
> Mobutu Sese Seko. Willame argues that Mobutu managed to remain in power for
> so long because he deployed the Machiavellian strategies of “ruling men”
> and “how to keep power” (1998: 38). Mobutu saw the chance to grab power in
> 1965 when the newly independent Belgian Congo was bedeviled by internal
> political factionalism and mired in cold war intrigues. Having captured
> power, Mobutu kept it by deploying a pattern of Machiavellian politics: “a
> sometimes unpredictable mix of threats . . . magnanimity, seduction,
> cunning, ‘make believe’, ‘double talk’ and ‘the frequent rotation and
> removal of bureaucrats, army officers, and ministers’” which created much
> uncertainty and insecurity in Zairian society and effectively precluded any
> organized threat to Mobutu’s power (Willame 1998: 39-40).
>
> But if Mobutu was a Machiavellian leader, he was also a transactional
> leader. As a way of maintaining his grip on power, Mobutu rewarded his
> supporters with financial and other incentives that eventually bankrupted
> his country. Unlike Nkrumah however, Mobutu had no vision for his country
> or for Africa. His primary concern was amassing wealth and keeping power.
> Those who supported him were amply rewarded; those who opposed him were
> effectively neutralized either through force or lucrative persuasion.
>
> Of our three case studies, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela lends himself
> more readily to contemporary leadership studies theory. As demonstrated by
> Robert Rotberg (1991), Chis Saunders (2014) and Daniel Lieberfeld (2014)
> Mandela was clearly a transformational leader, or perhaps more accurately,
> a transformational servant leader. Rotberg and Saunders have used
> transformational leadership theory to show how Mandela was able to
> transform his country from a violently divided society into a rainbow
> nation between 1990 when he was released from prison to 1999 when he
> stepped down as South Africa’s first Black president. Lieberfeld uses trait
> theory to highlight Mandela’s success as a transformational leader.
> According to Lieberfeld, Mandela possessed emotional self-control, empathy,
> a sense of self-efficacy, conceptual complexity and pragmatism that enabled
> him to perform the reconciliation-oriented leadership that transformed
> enemies into friends and made South Africa’s transition from Apartheid to
> democratic majority rule possible.
>
> Ironically, Mandela has also been characterized as a Machiavellian leader.
> In a newspaper review of British journalist Anthony Sampson’s biography of
> Nelson Mandela, James Gump (1999) writes that the Mandela that emerges from
> Sampson’s book “is part Gandhi and part Machiavelli, moral statesman and
> consummate politician.” In response to an email request from me to
> elaborate, Gump wrote that his reference to Mandela’s Machiavellianism
> derived from Mandela’s pragmatism: While “Mandela turned to violence in the
> early 1960s as a tactical position . . . he was also prepared to negotiate
> with his enemies at any time” (Gump February 6, 2013). Gump also cites
> Mandela’s “posturing with guards” on Robben Island “to gain prisoner
> rights” and “to make the best of a bad situation” as a Machiavellian
> survival strategy (2013). But if Mandela was a Machiavellian leader, he put
> his Machiavellian skills to good use, to beat the Apartheid system at its
> own game.
>
> In short, Hofstede’s claim that leadership studies theory is not
> applicable to studies of non-western leadership is flawed. As demonstrated
> in this paper and more comprehensively elsewhere (Jallow 2014a; Jallow
> 2014b), leadership studies theory may usefully be deployed in the study of
> African leadership. Organizational leadership theory as proposed by Edgar
> Schein, Bolman and Deal and many other scholars is a useful tool for the
> study of dysfunctional organizations in Africa. Information processing
> theory helps us understand the mentality of African leaders. Theories of
> transformational, transactional, servant leadership, among others are as
> suitable for the study of African leadership as they are for the study of
> Chinese, Japanese or American leadership. Machiavelli’s Lion and the Fox is
> a useful framework for the analysis of the leadership style of Ghana’s
> Kwame Nkrumah and other African leaders. Situational and contingency
> theories are applicable to the study of any leadership context. It is high
> time that leadership studies scholarship moves beyond theoretical
> exceptionalism and academic regionalism to embrace the wealth of leadership
> potential around the world.
>
> ------------------------------
>  [1] Due to the limited time available for presentations at the ILA
> Conference, this paper is an abridged version of a longer study.
>  [2] Personal communication.
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