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Theme 4: Leadership, Cross-Cultural Studies, Organisational Theory and Research Philosophy

Theme members: Dr Joseph Eyong, Dr Henry Mumbi and Amina Chitembo

This research theme explores questions around leadership and cross-cultural tensions within multi-cultural, multi-race and multi-continent mixes of employees in organizations. It investigates the individual and collective working life experiences of participants in relation to cultural differences and similarities amongst people from diverse cultures, traditions and regions in organizations and communities. Work within this sub-group engages phenomena from critical, realist and mixed philosophical paradigms. The thrust of our research is driven by interest in the intricacies and subjectivities of the concomitancy of indigeneity, cultural unorthodoxy and modernisation in work relationships that is manifest in different work contexts and organizational types.

Our research starts by posing questions such as: How does culture unite or differentiate people? Do we see, experience and do things in the same way across cultures, peoples and continents? If not, how can we understand the world such that we are able to appreciate, respect and learn between and across diverse cultural groupings, social identities and disparately constructed worlds? From this baseline, our research interests spread into trying to make sense of cultural and processual differences and similarities in organizational work, particularly between Western and non-Western work relation encounters.

We explore these questions by rooting into remnants of histories of indigeneity as it confronts and paradoxically embraces the tensions and frictions of the contemporary world. Faced with cultural complexities within leadership, followership and work relationships in cross-cultural encounters, we seek to question and challenge the flourishing hegemonic hierarchies of colonial legitimacies in order to interrogate  asymmetries of knowledge and knowing. We do so by elevating subaltern ownership of the self as it fights back pressures of cultural, linguistic and political appropriation. More recent anti-colonial and post-structural re-assessment of erstwhile assumptions has raised sensitivity to notions of hybridity, mimicry and subjugation of the subaltern in a global world of cultural inclusivity. Accordingly, our current research has focused on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), exploring tensions around indigenous African leadership, seeking to theorise differences between Afro-centric and Anglo-Saxon leadership, highlighting Afro-centric perceptions of high performance. The research is also exploring the challenges faced by trans-European African migrants in the UK work environment.

Grants

£40,000 in grants for funded projects in 2017 for research into leadership and leadership development in the African context (Dr Joseph Eyong). 

Publications:

  • Liedong, T. A., Peprah, A. A., & Eyong, J. E. (2020). Institutional voids and innovation governance: A conceptual exposition of the open versus closed architecture choice. Strategic Change, 29(1), 57-66. 
  • Eyong, J. E. (2019). Leadership for high performance in local councils in Cameroon and Nigeria: Examining deviant and concordant practices to the philosophy of Ubuntu. Africa Journal of Management, 5(2), 138-161. 
  • Sarpong, D., Maclean, M. and Eyong, J.E. (2018) ‘Cross-state mobility of European naturalised third-country nationals’, European Urban and Regional Studies, online first, 1-2 Eyong (2017) Indigenous African Leadership: Key differences from Anglo-Saxon Writings, Leadership, 13(2) 133–153 London, Sage.
  • Eyong, (2017) Indigenous African Leadership: Key differences from Anglo-Saxon Writings, Leadership, Vol. 13(2) 133–153 London, Sage.   
  • Eyong, J.E. (2017). Leadership in Cameroon and Nigeria: The Quest for Appreciable, Effective and Sustainable Leadership through Leadership Development Uongozi Institute, Tanzania archives. 
  • Eyong, J.E. (2016) Leadership Development in the African Context: A literature and contextual review, HAUS, Finland archives.

Combined Conference papers:

  • Eyong (2018) (forthcoming) African Public Service: Leadership as barrier to High-Performance, African Academy of Management (AFAM) 4th Biennial Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
  • Eyong (2018) (forthcoming) African Leadership theory Development for High Performance: Imaging Leadership in Visual objects and language, (PDW) African Academy of Management (AFAM) 4th Biennial Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
  • Eyong (2015) Indigenous African Leadership: Stories, Mythology, Metaphysics and Symbols: PDW Academy of Management Conference: Philadelphia, USA.
  • Eyong (2013) Conducting Anthropological Research in the African Context: Ethnography in West and Central Africa, 2nd International Research in Development Conference (RiDNet), University of Leeds June, 2013. 
  • Eyong (2012) Foundations of indigenous African Leadership: Behind the cultural veil of ‘EKPE’ Institution, 6th International Annual Developing Leadership Capacity Conference, (DLCC) University of Exeter; June 2012.
  • Mumbi. H. and Demola, O. (2016) ‘Shared Leadership in Voluntary Organisations: An Exploratory Survey using Internal Stakeholder Perspective’,Conference paper presented at BAM Conference September 2016.
  • Mumbi, H. (2012) 'Shared Leadership in Voluntary Organisations' conference paper presented at the 11th International Studying Leadership Conference in Perth, Australia that took place on 10th and 11th December 2012.
  • Mumbi, H. (2012) 'Shared Leadership in the Voluntary Sector' paper presented at the New Researchers’ Conference at Birmingham University on 10 September 2012.