Effective Organizational Leadership in Indian Context

Abstract

This chapter reviews organizational leadership studies to set research agenda for leadership research in India. Corporate India during post-independence was dominated by entrepreneurs from business families. During that phase, leadership studies were focused on patriarchs heading business families and were carried out by business historians and sociologists. Subsequently, leadership research agenda was influenced by western academic scholars who were keen to examine if participative leadership was effective in Indian context. Later, a few scholars undertook indigenous-emic studies to develop native understanding of leadership in India and also to identify effective leadership style for the Indian context. This effort led to the conceptualization of Nurturant Task Leadership (NTL) by (Sinha in The Nurturant Task Leader: A model of effective executive, concept, 1980; The cultural context of leadership and power. Sage, 1995), paternalistic leadership (Guptan in ASCI Journal of Management 18:77–86, 1988), consultative managerial leadership (CSML) (Kalra in Indigeneity and universality in social science: A South Asian response, pp. 407–428, Sage), Sannyasin and Karmayogin leaders (Bhawuk in Handbook of Indian psychology. Cambridge University Press, 2008; Spirituality and Indian psychology: Lessons from the Bhagavad-Gita, 2011), lokasamgraha (doing good for the society at large) as a leadership approach (Bhawuk in lokasaMgraha: An indigenous construct of leadership and its, 2019). The author also presents an archetype of an effective leader in Indian context. An effective leader in Indian context should be like the karta in an Indian joint family. Finally, the chapter discusses the challenges of grooming effective leaders in Indian context.