LEAD ‐ Leadership effectiveness, motivation, and culture in Africa: Lessons from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda

• Author: Hassan Adedoyin‐Rasaq,Samuel Sejjaaka,James Michaud,Thomas Anyanje Senaji,Bill Buenar Puplampu,Elham Metwally
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1298
• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Date: 01 December 2014

LEAD - Leadership effectiveness, motivation, and

culture in Africa: Lessons from Egypt, Ghana,

Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda

Thomas Anyanje Senaji*

Kenya Methodist University

Elham Metwally

The American University in Cairo

Samuel Sejjaaka

Makerere University Business School

Bill Buenar Puplampu

Central University College

James Michaud

Concordia University

Hassan Adedoyin-Rasaq

Lagos State University

Abstract

This exploratory study considers an African perspective on

leadership behaviour and motivation in Ghana, Egypt,

Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda using the Delphi Technique

with a small sample of corporate, community, and religious

leaders. Focus group sessions with working people

(nonleaders) then followed. The f‌indings indicate that vision,

commitment, honesty, goal-orientation, and humour were

descriptors of effective leadership. Further, it was found that

the quest for justice, extrinsic benef‌its, and service to

community motivated leaders, while extrinsic rewards and

the need to achieve motivated followers. This research con-

tributes to understanding leadership effectiveness and moti-

vation from an African context and informs both scholarship

and practice in these areas. Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Pub-

lished by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: Africa, leadership, motivation, culture, Delphi

Technique, focus groups, LEAD

Résumé

La présente étude exploratoire propose une perspective

africaine sur le mode de leadership et la motivation

au Ghana, en Égypte, au Kenya, au Nigéria et en Ouganda.

Elle s’appuie sur la méthode Delphi utilisée sur un petit

échantillon de chefs d’entreprises, de leaders communautaires

et de responsables religieux. Elle se base également sur des

séances de groupe de discussions avec des travailleurs. Les

résultats montrent que la vision, l’engagement, l’honnêteté,

l’orientation des objectifs et l’humour émergent comme des

descripteurs du leadership eff‌icace. Par ailleurs, tandis que la

quête de la justice, les avantages extrinsèques et le service

communautaire motivent les leaders, les récompenses

extrinsèques et l’envie d’atteindre des objectifs f‌ixés motivent

les non-leaders. La recherche permet de cerner l’eff‌icacité du

leadership et de la motivation à partir du contexte africain.

Elle contribue ainsi à la fois au savoir et à la pratique dans

ces deux domaines.

Mots-clés : Afrique, Leadership, motivation, culture,

méthode Delphi, groupes de consultation, LEAD

This study explores different perceptions of culture,

leader effectiveness, and motivation in Egypt, Ghana,

Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. We analyze the opinions of

selected knowledgeable persons, including scholars and

management practitioners, regarding leader effectiveness

and the motivating factors contributing to successful and ef-

fective leadership. This area of research has thus far received

insuff‌icient attention in the international literature. To f‌ill

this gap, this study is part of the larger LEAD (Leadership

Effectiveness in Africa and the African Diaspora) research

project, which covers Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, and

the US, and provides useful knowledge that informs man-

agement and leaders in Africa where the impact of leaders

on socioeconomic development is perhaps more greatly felt.

By exploring perceptions of leadership and motivation in an

African context, this study partly addresses this question

This research was partially funded by grants from SSHRC, SHRM Founda-

tion, and JMSB Concordia University to Terri R. Lituchy.

*Please address correspondence to: Thomas Senaji, Kenya Methodist Uni-

versity, School of Business and Economics, P.O. Box 41033–00100,

KEMU Towers 15

th

f‌loor, Nairobi, Kenya. Email: tsenaji@gmail.com

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

31: 228–244 (2014)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1298

Can J Adm Sci

31(4), 228–244 (2014)Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 228

posed by Barker (1997): “How can we train leaders if we do

not know what leadership is?”(p. 343) and is at the heart of

our quest for a localized and contextualized understanding

of the meaning of leadership in Africa

Despite a growing body of scholarship in the area of

leadership in Africa, the literature remains small in compari-

son to the wealth of research and applications available

elsewhere in the general area of leadership. Writings within

the last ten years by scholars such as Jackson (2004);

Puplampu (2005, 2010); Nkomo and Cook (2006); Jackson,

Amaeshi, and Yavuz (2008); Walumbwa, Avolio, and Aryee

(2011); Muchiri (2011); Nkomo and Kriek (2011), and

Lituchy, Ford, and Punnett (2013) demonstrate a number

of issues. Cumulatively, these scholarly outputs show that:

(a) there is signif‌icant impact of leadership action and/or

inaction on the prof‌itability of African organizations and

nations; (b) there is growing interest in leadership and

management issuesin and on Africa; (c) there is limited avail-

ability of relevant scholarly material, requiring continuous

and consistent effort on the part of researchers, and (d) there

is still more to learn in order to fully understand the interplay

between culture, tradition, history, and personal dispositions

in how the leadership process and leaders operate in Africa.

Of particular importance is the need to better understand

notions of leader effectiveness, leadership exemplars, and

the personal views of people who either occupy positions of

leadership or experience the process of leadership in Africa.

As Muchiri (2011) noted, some of the emerging literatures

show that concepts such as authentic leadership and servant

leadership may help elucidate the causal links between leaders’

behaviours and organizational outcomes; however, an Africa

context and philosophy remain insuff‌iciently explored. Nkomo

and Kriek (2011), in a study of corporate leadership through

times of major change, showed conclusively that sociopolitical

histories and socioeconomic contexts—at the level of the

nation state—are important milieus that corporate leaders in

Africa navigate on a dailybasis. The extant Western literatures

and examples hardly draw on such nuances in their discourses

on leadership. In sum, the African situation is unique. The aim

of this study is to contribute a greater understanding of the

perceptions of leadership effectiveness in Africa.

The Importance of Effective Leadership and Motivation

for Africa

For Africa, the challenges of poverty, underdevelopment,

and malfunctioning a nd underperforming instituti ons and

organizations are real. This despite the massive natural

resource base of the continent, which is not effectively tapped

into. In this regard, governments, organizations, and institu-

tions in Africa need to construct appropriate models in order

to use those resources and signif‌icantly impact socioeconomic

development. This requires leaders across the spectrum

(political, organizational, social) to be strategic, prudent, and

conscious of how to ensure strategic f‌it between the what is

available and what is possible. The challenges of organiza-

tional existence and organizational health in Africa identif‌ied

and discussed by Munene (1995) and Puplampu (2005)

suggest that strategic efforts are constrained due to the dearth

of leadership effectiveness on the continent. Intangible assets

such as leadership styles, culture, skill and competence, and

motivation are seen increasingly as key sources of strength

in those f‌irms that can combine people and processes and

organizational performance (Nicholson, 2000; Purcell, Kinnie,

Hutchinson, Rayton, & Swart, 2004). Increases in leadership

effectiveness as well as leader and worker motivation in the

African context could be key in reversing African countries’

underperformance.

Since the work of Steers, Porter, and Bigley (1996)

showed leadership and motivation as concepts that interac-

tively inform work behaviour, it is useful to study the two

concepts together. This dualized appreciation of leadership

and motivation is consistent with similar dualized consider-

ation between leadership and organizational culture as

advanced by Schein (1992). In considering culture and lead-

ership, Schein argues that the two concepts are effectively

“two sides of the same coin”(p. 1) with leadership incepting

and energizing the evolution of culture and this culture de-

f‌ining the way leaders must act and react. In the same way,

Steers et al. noted that while organizations develop

structures and processes that guide behaviour, increasingly

turbulent environments and individual differences draw at-

tention to the important role of leaders and leadership as

agents of fostering collective action and guiding such action.

Leadership offers the opportunity to bend personal motiva-

tions, group norms, and environmental opportunities toward

organizational objectives. While motivational concerns look

at the dynamics around attracting people to work and deploy

appropriate behaviours in the work place, leadership uses in-

f‌luence via power and reward capacities to leverage moti-

vated behaviour. In this regard, the recent writings of

Lindenberg and Foss (2011) highlight the role of authority

structures, accountability, and governance arrangements in

fostering joint production and collective motivated action.

Def‌ined as contemporaneous inf‌luences on and dynamics

around action and behaviour, motivation incorporates con-

siderations of what energizes, sustains, and directs behaviour

(Steers et al.). In this regard, Yukl’s (1994) conceptualiza-

tion of leadership as a social inf‌luencing process through

which certain persons cause others to exert effort and struc-

ture their behaviours in particular ways can be seen as a tool

through which work motivation can also be facilitated. It is

therefore necessary within the African context for studies to

understand both concepts, explore their interactions, and seek

ways of facilitatingapplications, which should ultimately lead

to the progress of African societies. While there is evidence

that the characteristics of an effective leader and what

motivates leaders are agreed upon across some Western

cultures (Muchiri, 2011), debate remains about perceptions

of effective leadership (Den Hartog, House, Hanges, Ruiz-

LEAD AFRICA SENAJI ET AL.

Can J Adm Sci

31(4), 228–244 (2014)Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 229