Kiggundu et al. (1983:66) noted that more than 70 percent of the world’s population lives in the global south grappling with administrative challenges. To build ‘a universal administrative science’, they underlined the necessity of understanding ‘’what managers and administrators in this part of the countries do or fail to do’’.
The move to that ends, however, has advanced slightly. Most studies rely on dated theories and often are theory-confirming type paying little or no attention to contexts (Nzelibe, 1986; Kiggundu et. al., 1983). They too are limited in number, ‘’disparate, descriptive, qualitative, and non-comparative’’ (Gulrajani & Moloney, 2011:78). Our paper is an attempt to contribute to bridge these gaps. It fits into the ‘Leading and managing people in different cultural contexts’ theme of the IRSPM call for the leadership panel.
We dealt with administrative leadership, a practice strongly influenced by much wider settings (Van Wart et al. 2015; Van Wart, 2013; Kee et. al. 2007). Using Q-methodology, an approach reasonably like ‘‘grounded-theory’’ (Van Eijk & Steen, 2013:6), we inductively studied the subject beginning with a straightforward question of ‘what leadership roles the Ethiopian civil service managers would preferably embody in their setting?’
We first developed a sophisticated concourse joining up perspectives gathered through interviews and review of leadership literature. Applying the Competing Value Frame Work (Quinn et. al, 2011), as a general guideline, we selected representative statements from the concourse. We then used these statements to examine the belief system of 51 civil service managers about their leadership roles and found three distinct archetypes of leadership role preferences. We labeled these roles as the change agents, affective leaders, and result-oriented realists. We examined these roles in detail and briefly compared them with the influential leadership theories. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications for the future research agenda.
References
Gulrajani, N. and Moloney, K. (2011). Globalizing Public Administration: Today’s Research and Tomorrow’s Agenda. Public Administration Review, Vol. 72, Iss. 1, pp. 78–86.
Kee, J.E., K. Newcomer and S.M. Davis. (2007). ‘Transformational Stewardship: Leading Public-Sector Change’, in R.S. Morse, T.F. Buss and C.M. Kinghorn (eds), Transforming Public Leadership for the 21st Century. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 154–84.
Kiggundu, M. N., Jørgensen, J.J. and Hafsi, T. (1983). Administrative Theory and Practice in Developing Countries: A Synthesis. Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 66-84.
Nzelibe, C. O. (1986). The Evolution of African Management Thought. International Studies of Management & Organization, Vol.16, No. 2, Management and Organization in Africa, pp. 6-16.
Quinn, R., Faerman, S., Thompson, M and Clair, L. (2011), Becoming a master manager: A competing Value Approaches (5eds). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
van Eijk, C.J.A & Steen, T.P.S. (2013). Why People Co-Produce: Analysing citizens’ perceptions on co-planning engagement in health care services. Public Management Review, DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2013.841458.
Van Wart M. (2013). Lessons from Leadership Theory and the Contemporary Challenges of Leaders. Public Administration Review, Vol. 73, Iss. 4, pp. 553–565.
Van Wart, M., Hondeghem, A., Schwella, E. (2015). Leadership and culture. Comparative models of top civil servant training. Palgrave.
