Ethnic leadership in Africa: A systematic literature review

Introduction/Main Objectives: This study examines the philosophical influence of African traditions, particularly Ubuntu, on servant leadership in Africa and beyond. It seeks to understand how Africa’s rich cultural heritage can shape leaders who prioritize service and employee well-being. Background Problems: Leadership models from the Global North often fail to capture Africa’s unique cultural dynamics, prompting calls for servant leadership rooted in African values. This study explores the intersection of traditional leadership, contemporary practices, and their impact on governance and socio-economic development. Novelty: This study explores the uniqueness of African leadership by analyzing the interplay between traditional values, cultural heritage, modern practices, highlighting how indigenous philosophies can influence contemporary decision-making and leadership dynamics in a global context. Research Methods: Using a systematic literature review, the study draws insights from 59 peer-reviewed articles, online databases, reports, and textbooks. Sources include JSTOR, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Scopus. Findings/Results: Findings indicate that Ubuntu embodies values such as humanity and collective responsibility, forming a strong foundation for servant leadership models applicable beyond Africa. The literature highlights gaps in Global North models, which often overlook African leadership realities. Additionally, traditional teachings and oral histories contribute to the sustainability of servant leadership in Africa. Conclusion: This study underscores the significant contribution of Ubuntu to the global leadership discourse. It demonstrates the potential of this philosophy to foster ethical, community-driven leadership that transcends cultural boundaries and can be adapted and applied in diverse contexts worldwide.

Africa needs sustainable leadership to confront its unique challenges and capitalise on its potential. Thus, this chapter presents African leadership instances from diverse fields. This study aims to analyse the need for sustainable leadership in Africa using a systematic literature review. The PRISMA approach was adopted to perform the literature review. This was accomplished by looking through peer-reviewed databases, such as JSTOR, ProQuest and African Journals Online (AJOL), for manuscripts to find relevant data unique to the African context. After a thorough search, studies that did not meet the study’s objective were removed from consideration throughout the review phase. In light of this, the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist was used to ensure that the publications chosen for this review were evaluated for quality assessment and bias minimisation. The systematic literature review identified grey areas from previous studies on socioeconomic development through infrastructure projects, inclusive governance, entrepreneurship, inequality reduction, human development and terms of employment for sustainable leadership in Africa.

Social science studies view community wellbeing to be a cumulative construct of multiple dimensions which include social, economic, environmental, physical, political, health, education indicators and more. The study of community wellbeing is compounded by climate change as it increases the frequency of disasters affecting all dimensions of community wellbeing. It becomes crucial for communities to build community resilience and address the impact on community wellbeing in the context of Disaster Risk Reduction and sustainable development. This systematic literature aimed to understand how community wellbeing is affected by climate change. It analysed 23 papers from Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, and Google Scholar, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method, to address three research questions: (i) how do climate change scholars understand community wellbeing, (ii) how community wellbeing is affected by specific climate change factors/conditions and the nature of impact, and (iii) how the impact on community wellbeing as a result of climate change is being addressed. The study found that climate change scholars hold mixed and multiple views or understanding of community wellbeing and climate change led to mental stress decreasing community wellbeing. The solutions to improve community wellbeing in the context of climate change suggests that adaptation should be the main policy instrument supplemented by mitigation strategies and recommends building a vibrant research culture in wellbeing and climate studies, among others. This review provides insights into the complex relationship between community wellbeing and climate change and identifies areas for future research and policy development.

PurposeThrough comparative analysis with other social science disciplines, gaps are identified in the performance gaming literature of public administration as it compares to other social science disciplines in order to understand directions for future research in this space.Design/methodology/approachThis study involves a systematic review of the performance gaming literature, focusing on important drivers of performance gaming. Using Google Scholar, Web of Science, and ProQuest Central, the systematic review covers years ranging from 1990 through 2019 and revealed empirical studies that were deemed relevant based on whether an article was (1) an empirical study and (2) performance gaming or cheating behavior was the outcome variable. Out of the 81 articles surmised from the search, 51 were regarded as relevant by meeting these criteria.FindingsThe main finding is that public administration has primarily focused on drivers that are embedded in the performance system. The other social sciences (psychology and economics, in particular) focus mainly on individual factors, mostly cognitive in nature. Public administration has also looked at organizational drivers, though this is a burgeoning area. Scholars in public administration may benefit from the other social sciences by determining how individual drivers work within the context of public organizations and how these shape organizational behavior.Originality/valuePer my knowledge, the paper is the first to systematically compare the performance gaming literature of public administration to other social science disciplines. The paper provides a direction for this burgeoning area of research.

Social entrepreneurship is a field widely explored from multiple perspectives and within multiple academic disciplines. In parallel, practitioners have applied social entrepreneurship principles to multiple sectors and on multiple levels. This research investigates how social capital applied to social entrepreneurship can contribute as a driver of social enterprise. A systematic literature review was conducted based on searches of major academic databases (Web of Science, Ebsco and Periódicos Capes), winnowing an initial list of 3,106 papers down to 472 articles that underwent content analysis. The results of this analysis were summarised and used to develop a theoretical proposal and research propositions relating social entrepreneurship to social capital and highlighting the social entrepreneur’s social connections with the collective actors and institutions that together constitute social entrepreneurship. The discussion presented suggests that the interface between social entrepreneurship and social capital is a latent field for research and the paper ends by presenting a model to consolidate research efforts, identifying three key themes that recur in the literature: Creation of social capital by the social entrepreneur, social capital and its relationship with the institutions, and Social capital as a former of groups. In these terms, a future agenda is presented for debating these issues.

The role of governance in mobile phones for inclusive human development in Sub-Saharan Africa

PurposeThis study examines the role of waqf – an Islamic philanthropic endowment – in supporting sustainable development through a quantitative analysis of academic literature. Conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis using databases such as Scopus, Web of Science and Dimensions, we identify key trends, regional focuses and gaps in waqf-related research.Design/methodology/approachThe study analyzes 71 articles from Scopus, Web of Science and Dimensions databases. Advanced bibliometric techniques are employed to examine publication trends, author productivity, citation patterns, geographical distribution, institutional analysis, journal analysis, keyword analysis and thematic evolution. This unique combination of databases and comprehensive analysis provides a holistic view of the field.FindingsResults reveal a significant increase in research output since 2018, with a geographical concentration in Southeast Asia and emerging international collaborations. Key research clusters focus on integrating waqf with sustainable finance mechanisms and global development goals. However, the study uncovers an under-exploration of waqf’s specific applications in green infrastructure and building projects. This analysis provides valuable insights for academics, policymakers and practitioners, offering a roadmap for future studies and practical applications of waqf in sustainable urban development.Practical implicationsThis study shows that waqf could be a novel financing method for sustainable infrastructure projects. Gaps in existing studies propose ways to construct Islamic endowment-compliant financial models, such as merging monetary waqf with renewable energy initiatives or using FINTECH to improve waqf management. These insights can help policymakers and practitioners promote international collaboration and cross-border collaborations to improve waqf-led sustainable development.Social implicationsThis study underscores waqf’s potential to address key socio-economic challenges, such as poverty alleviation, community welfare and inclusive urban development. Suggesting the use of waqf in funding green infrastructure projects highlights a pathway toward more equitable and inclusive development strategies. The emphasis on the long-term socio-economic impacts of waqf-funded initiatives encourages policies and research focused on maximizing the social benefits of these projects, ensuring that they contribute to the welfare of diverse communities.Originality/valueThis study’s originality lies in its focused examination of waqf in the context of green building and infrastructure, utilizing a unique combination of three major databases and employing a comprehensive set of bibliometric analyses. It contributes to the literature by identifying research gaps, emerging trends and potential future directions in waqf-led sustainable development for green infrastructure and buildings. While earlier research has touched upon the contribution of waqfs in Islamic finance and overall sustainable development, this research fills the gap uniquely by specifically targeting its application in green buildings and infrastructure – a specialized yet very important subtopic that is less researched in literature. Through the integration of bibliometric analysis in three databases (Scopus, Web of Science and Dimensions), this research provides unparalleled insights into thematic trends, geographic bias and collaborative networks, offering a roadmap for future research in the intersection of faith-based endowments and environmental sustainability.

Black and minority ethnic (BME) leaders are greatly under-represented in English schools compared with the number of BME pupils. This paper reports the findings from research with BME leaders in 2004–2005 and links them to insights from a systematic literature review. The paper shows that BME teachers experience many barriers in developing their careers, including family and community attitudes, unfair recruitment and selection processes, and both covert and overt discrimination. The participants in the research demonstrate qualities of determination, resilience and hard work in overcoming these barriers, leading to the conclusion that these pioneers are ‘exceptional’ people.

Publishing in the Academy of Management Journals

The field of organizational leadership has made significant progress in recent years, resulting in a substantial corpus of literature. Nevertheless, the African context continues to face challenges in the development of organizational leaders. This discrepancy underscores the necessity of additional research to investigate the leadership dynamics within the continent. This study seeks to address the knowledge gap on leadership's important role in solving Africa's organizational difficulties through a structured review process that ensures a reproducible and thorough synthesis of current literature. This article reviews 515 leadership studies conducted in Africa from 1960 to 2019. The purpose of this study was to broaden the understanding of leadership in the following ways: (i) Clarify the number and nature of organizational leadership studies in Africa vis-à-vis other leadership domains; (ii) Coding and categorize the theoretical and nomological network of organizational leadership articles in Africa; (iii) Provide a comprehensive analysis of the findings to comprehend the holistic research representation of organizational leadership in Africa; and (iv) Examine the instruments and methodologies employed in studies to assess organizational leadership on the continent. The outcomes have a dual purpose. Descriptive diachronic analysis allows scholars to explore an extensive collection of historical leadership literature. This article identifies four explanatory claims about African leadership research through a synchronic analysis. These are: (i) There is a notable scarcity of studies focusing on organizational leadership in Africa; (ii) Emic leadership scale development is a rarity; (iii) The effectiveness of techniques about organizational leadership development in Africa is debatable; and (iv) Many of the functions that managers are expected to fulfill are covered by organizational leadership theory. This comprehensive review significantly advances our efforts to understand and improve African organizational leadership practices.

Introduction. The role of state regulation of the agro-food sector should be to create a legal framework and ensure equal fair access to state resources, ensure budget inclusion and reasonable use of mechanisms to encourage agricultural enti-ties to pursue social inclusion through co-financing and participation. The purpose of the article is to study and generalize the theoretical and methodological foundations of state regula-tion of inclusive development in the agro-food sector. Results. The strategic goal of creating a system of inclusive development of the agro-food sector, which is to achieve comprehensive accelerated development of agriculture on the involvement basis, barrier-free and effective cooperation of all agro-food entities to improve the welfare of citizens and local communities, human capital, poverty and inequalities. The concepts of "paternalistic system of inclusive development" and "market model of inclusive development" are proposed, as well as the differences between them, which consist of different role models for the state and citizens in creating public goods and their distribution. The necessity of the market model introduction for inclusive development taking into account the institutional weakness of the state, the essential principles of the inclusive paradigm and the peculiarities of the agro-food sphere of Ukraine is substantiated. It is shown that in the agro-industrial complex the implementation of inclusive and sus-tainable development approaches requires improvement of interaction between the subjects in this sphere on the basis of ‘win-win’ principles and increase of mutual trust, the absence of which causes a number of structural imbalances. Conclusions. It is theoretically substantiated that strengthening the distribution function of the state through the in-troduction of new taxes will reduce the financial stability and investment attractiveness of agro-food holdings, which are important taxpayers and drivers of socially responsible strategies that do not meet the strategic interests of the state and agro-food complex. The main functions of the state in regulating the inclusive development of the agro-food sector are de-termined. Prospects for further research are to develop applied tools for inclusive development and outstanding role models for various agro-food actors in the implementation of this system. Key words: social inclusion, inclusive development, system of inclusive development of agro-food sphere, state regu-lation of inclusive development.

Purpose: This article aims to investigate the relationship between project management (PM) and digital transformation (DT) in organizations. Originality/value: This article contributes to expanding the knowledge of the relationship between PM and DT, indicating that PM and its different approaches are used strategically to enable DT implementation in organizations. In addition, it is evidenced that DT demands individuals with technical and behavioral competencies to work in innovative and rapid organizational, cultural, and technological contexts arising from adopting new digital technologies. Design/methodology/approach: The research is characterized as exploratory with a qualitative approach. The methodology adopted was the systematic literature review and sought to understand the relationship and convergence between PM and DT. The research was carried out broadly, and the articles were selected on the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar bases, forming the analysis corpus with 104 articles published from 2015 to 2020. Findings: The results converged in the composition of four factors: competencies; strategy; digital technologies; and portfolio, programs, and projects, demonstrating the evolutionary and adaptive capacity of PM to support major changes such as DT.

This study assesses the synergy effects of governance in mobile phone penetration for inclusive human development in Sub-Saharan Africa with data for the period 2000-2012 by employing a battery of interactive estimation techniques, namely: Fixed effects (FE), Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) and Tobit regressions. Concepts of political (voice & accountability and political stability/no violence), economic (government effectiveness and regulation quality) and institutional (corruption-control and rule of law) governance are employed. The following findings are established. First, the previously apparent positive correlation between mobile phones and inclusive development can be extended to a positive effect. Second, whereas political governance is overwhelmingly not significant across estimated models, average effects from economic governance are higher relative to institutional governance. Third, on the synergy effects from interactions between mobile phones and governance variables, whereas none are apparent in FE regressions, there are significant synergy effects in GMM and Tobit estimations, notably, from: (i) regulation quality in the former and (ii) political stability, voice & accountability and rule of law in the latter. Fourth, there is consistent evidence of convergence in inclusive human development. Policy implications are discussed.

This study aimed to analyze the extent to which infrastructure development in Indonesia has a positive impact on an area, where the impact is not only seen from an economic perspective but also from a sociocultural and environmental perspective in the region. A systematic literature review was used as a method in this study to show various cases of infrastructure development and the impacts that occur in each of these development activities. Several cases from South Sumatra, East Kalimantan, East Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi, and Papua were used in this paper to demonstrate the impact of inclusive and sustainable development on equity efforts in Indonesia comprehensively. The results of this study show a positive relationship between each case, where inclusive development can strengthen a region’s potential. Community involvement during and after development has a positive impact, either directly through the employment opportunities provided, or indirectly through economic potentials, such as post-development business development. Some factors to consider include the role of the government and development implementers in increasing community participation in all development activities in their area, where there are still some unresolved coordination issues.

This study aimed to map the development of research and scientific publications about social movements on social media. This study used the Systematic Literature Review approach to analyze 471 scientific articles that were selected based on the PRISMA procedure. The articles were taken from the Scopus database published in the 2018-2023 period. Cite Space software was used to visualize the data such as topic clusters, authors, and topic trends in the study of social movements on social media. This study reveals that there are ten topic clusters in the study of social movements on social media, namely collective action (#0), long covid (#1), stock market (#2), umbrella movement (#3), social media (#4 ), environmentally-related migration (#5), racial justice (#6), extreme events (#7), influence odoj (#8), sexual abuse (9#), and systems research (10#). Collective action is the most dominant cluster compared to other clusters, which shows that collective action is a general concept used in the study of social movements on social media, which is related to various issues in other clusters, such as Covid-19, politics, racism, and the stock market. Each topic cluster was discussed by many authors with various study focuses, but all authors used the concept of social media as a social movement to explain the issues that were the focus of their respective studies. Trend topics in the study of social movements on social media show that social movements and social media are a unified concept that can be used to explain various issues to study. This research contributes to the development of social movement studies in the digital era, the internet, mobility networks, and artificial intelligence. The limitation of this research is that the data used were from the Scopus database only so the findings cannot fully explain the study of social movements on social media. Therefore, future research needs to use data or references from other reputable databases such as the Web of Science and EBSCO.