Question Of Leadership Research Articles

Recalibrating pandemic risk leadership: Thirteen crisis ready strategies for COVID-19

Good leadership is widely regarded as a crucial component of risk and crisis management and remains an enduring theme of more than 40 years of inquiry into emergencies, disasters, and controversies. Today, the question of good leadership has come under the spotlight again as a key factor shaping how successfully nations have dealt with the COVID-19 global health crisis. Amidst plummeting levels of public trust, the worst recession of the G7, and the highest death toll in Europe, the UK’s pandemic leadership response has faced especially stern accusations of incompetence and culpability for what has been described as the most catastrophic science policy failure for a generation. Addressing these issues, this paper argues for the adoption of a more pluralised UK leadership approach for handling COVID-19. Particularly, it is contended that as COVID-19 is a multifaceted problem that presents many varied and distributed challenges, UK leadership should employ a differentiated range of strategic mechanisms and processes to help improve substantive understandings and decision-making, support collective resilience, and build adaptive capacities as the crisis continues. The paper accordingly identifies and elaborates thirteen strategies, drawing on lessons and insights from the risk and crisis management field, that are proposed to serve as a useful heuristic to help guide UK pandemic leadership in this endeavour. To illustrate the value and application of each strategy, examples are provided of noteworthy leadership responses to COVID-19 observed internationally thus far, as well as leadership problems that have hampered the UK’s pandemic response. In conclusion, it is suggested that in as far as the conduct expected of leaders during a pandemic, or any other crisis, should maintain and be reflective of democratic values and standards of legitimacy, these strategies may also provide broadly applicable normative criteria against which leadership performance in handling COVID-19 may be judged as crisis ready.

Nigerian politicians and the leadership question in Emeka Nwabueze’s A Parliament of Vultures and Alex Asigbo’s The Reign of Paschal Amusu

African countries have consistently been involved in civil unrest, political instability, threats of secession, selection instead of election as well as rigging of elections, sit tight leaders and many more malaise. Despite the fact that Africa is blessed with enough human, material and natural resources, yet most of these resources have been grossly mismanaged or fretted away by her leaders who have refused to rise above board. The aim of the research is to portray the efforts of our dramatists in exposing the machinations of our leaders in their quest to retain power and acquire wealth to the detriment of the masses. The objectives of the study is to expose some these devices and enlighten the public on the schemes of their leaders and politicians who pretend to be serving the public whilein the real sense are enriching themselves while impoverishing the masses as well as to expose the different ways in which these heinous crime against the people are perpetrated. The research adopted the qualitative methodology and a context analysis approach of two drama texts of Emeka Nwabueze and Alex Asigbo. The findings show that politicians adopt many tactics to fulfill their selfish and inordinate ambitions to the detriment of the nation which this paper sets to interrogate. The paper therefore concludes that drama has continued to be a potent tool in exposing societal ills. The study recommends conscientization and reawaking of national consciousness of both the leaders and the general public.
 Keywords: Leaders, Politicians, Dramatists, Masses

European Council Studies 26 March: A Question of Leadership

European Council Studies 26 March: A Question of Leadership

Comparing Isaac Butt and John Redmond

John Redmond is traditionally associated with Charles Stewart Parnell, whom he replaced at the head of the small Parnellite faction following the split of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1890. More recently Redmond has been compared to Edward Carson in an attempt to highlight that, despite being political opponents, both men also shared much in common. Redmond might have succeeded Parnell as one of the senior figures of the Irish Home Rule movement and yet historians concur that he ‘did not resemble his erstwhile hero and mentor […] either in his power or in his style of leadership’. Beyond the question of leadership and political clout, it may also be suggested that Parnell was not the only figure that played an influence in shaping Redmond’s ideas and discourse. In a 2014 paper, Colin Reid contended that ‘[w]hile the Parnellite strand of John Redmond’s political leanings has received considerable attention in recent years, his Buttite inheritance remains to be explored by historians, shaping as it did his conciliatory rhetoric, imperial sensibilities and openness to a federalist solution’. Our proposed paper intends to further explore this suggestion and compare Isaac Butt and John Redmond. Personal lives, historiography and the questions of Home Rule, federalism and empire will be focused upon.

The Nigerian Leadership Question and the Quest for National Development: The Elitist Perspective

The roles of leaders in any given organized society are vital for the development and sustenance of such society. Leaders are expected to have a clear vision and well articulated agenda on how to ensure that followers key into this agenda using the instrument of mass mobilization and effective communication. For Nigeria getting leadership right has been a recurring debate since its independence in 1960. The country has had more of sectional leaders, self seeking and dictatorship than nationalists as leaders. Nigeria political landscape is dominated by the governing elite who share similar orientation on the need to preserve the political system for continuous perpetuation of control over the polity. This study examines the Nigerian leadership question within the framework of the elite theory. The paper analyzed the applicability of the elite theory in the face of Nigeria leadership question and its quest for development. It further examined whether the elite theory has been misapplied in solving the Nigerian challenges and made recommendations. The study found out that the elite theory is applicable in explaining the Nigerian leadership question. The study adopted both primary and secondary sources of data. The data collected were analyzed using content analysis and descriptive methods. The study revealed that corruptions, self serving policies, nepotism, weak institutions, constitutional abuse among others are the major problems affecting leadership in Nigeria.

Corruption and the leadership question in Nwabueze’s A Parliament of Vultures and Ogbeche’s Harvest of Corruption

Corruption is one of the numerous problems that besieged most African nations immediately after their independence and is still eating deep into their systems. In Nigeria, the economic, socio-political and religious sectors are in disarray. Corruption is increasing and is at the edge of turning into a norm. It has reached the extent of undermining development and economic prosperity that more than 75% of the people are living in abject poverty. Politicians devoid of integrity, patriotism and commitment lead but blow the whistle on their efforts in the fight against corruption. Many writers have expressed the menace of corruption in their works. This paper explores playwrights’ critical responses to the fight against corruption in Nigeria and aims at providing solutions by highlighting the severe punishments to be meted on citizens guilty of corruption. It also aims at unfolding qualities expected of the citizens for a meaningful fight of corruption.

Courageous leadership – what defines it in the modern organisation

PurposeIt is important to challenge the popular image of courageous leadership, which in the public imagination is inextricably interlinked with the exercise of power and authority. People often paint a picture in their mind of somebody who knows all the answers and can drive and communicate decisions through their own sense of certainty and will. In nearly every case, especially in an HR context, that is a false picture.Design/methodology/approachThis paper looks to highlight that the best leaders are in fact often those that do not make all the decisions, do not have all the right answers and are prepared to admit that. It takes great strength to admit vulnerability and acknowledge that you do not know everything.FindingsThe paper highlights that it is important to have a vision and give direction, but it is genuinely courageous to turn to the intelligent teams you have within the organisation and draw on their help.Originality/valueThe paper takes a distinctive stance on the question of courageous leadership, arguing that good leadership is about acknowledging what you do not know and reaching out to your people to fill in the gaps, and it is also about learning when to move on. Being able to acknowledge when you can add little further value to the business and allow someone else to take the reins is perhaps, in senior leadership, the most courageous act of all.

Populism vs. the Popular in South African Literature

While the damage done by populist leaders to the social fabric and aspirations of ordinary citizens is a staple of postcolonial African fiction across the continent, the subject is still relatively under-explored in South African novels written since the end of apartheid. There is a substantial and ever-growing body of dystopian writing focusing on the disappointments of everyday life in the rainbow nation, but the question of leadership has yet to emerge as the subject of serious or sustained attention. The anomaly is doubly curious, given that leaders are sharply scrutinized in the political press, in print and online. With reference to Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason, the essay takes a long view of a century of South African writing and proposes that there is a fault-line between populism, as a manipulative and sectarian appeal to ‘the people,’ and the popular, as an ethically credible and often necessary rallying point. The essay teases out this tension in some key historical fictions of the New African period and then examines further, nuanced elaborations in A.C. Jordan’s Ingqumbo Yeminyana (The Wrath of the Ancestors), Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter, correspondence between Mongane Serote and Lionel Abrahams, and later fiction and poetry. The essay reaches the obvious but nevertheless polemical conclusion that the very power and durability of the popular throughout the decades of apartheid might also be the impediment that has to be overcome if the dangers of populism are to be squarely confronted.

The Question of Leadership

The Question of Leadership

BOOK REVIEW: Asia�s Trouble Spots: The Leadership Question in Conflict Resolution. By A.S. Bhalla.

BOOK REVIEW: Asia�s Trouble Spots: The Leadership Question in Conflict Resolution. By A.S. Bhalla.

The Decentralization, Devolution and Local Governance Practices in Nepal: The Emerging Challenges and Concerns

Nepal has been facing political changes and systems over the decades. Presently Nepal has adopted the unitary federal political system. Under the system, devolution of power is shared to local levels in order to strengthen localism and development. The devolution is a broader concept of decentralization where power and authority are provided to a sub-national level of government constitutionally. This paper discusses the devolution and its implication on local levels that are directly related to local people and grass-roots democracy. The Constitution of Nepal 2015, Local Government Operations Act 2017, Inter Governmental Fiscal Transfer Act 2017 and other sectoral legislation and published related documents are reviewed for this paper. Besides, three numbers of local levels (rural municipalities) are taken as an empirical inquiry to find out the problems and challenges facing by local levels. The Constitution of Nepal 2015 provided enough power and authority to the local levels based on devolution under federalism. Despite that, the inadequacy of laws, and policies, and lacking coordination between local levels and center-province and poor mobilization are major challenges to local levels and the question of good governance and leadership is more pronounced in this regard. The relationship among the center, province and local levels is still debatable. Overall, the present collateral form of local governance is not being well functioned. The effectiveness of Leadership seems to be important to cope with local governance for local development and grass-roots democracy.

The leadership question

The NHS needs leaders, to motivate staff, boost morale and ensure effective care is provided for patients – but what does leadership look like and what more needs to be done?

Doctrine and Life: The Theological Legacy of Stephen Sykes

Throughout Stephen Sykes’ theological career a number of key themes continually re-emerged with respect to the Church, Christ, the ministry, the Christian life and the doctrinal tradition. This article offers a survey of and a commentary on these themes. It does this by employing a simple framework focusing on issues concerning Christian identity and relevance. Identity issues are considered from a personal, theological and ecclesial perspective. Relevance issues briefly cover Sykes’ concerns for the ministry of men and women and the question of power and leadership. Stephen Sykes’ theological and ecclesial leadership provide a remarkable resource and lasting legacy for the Church.

Patriotic narratives on national leadership in Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) song texts, ca 2000–2017

The national leadership question in post-2000 Zimbabwe can be examined using the rhetoric of the politicians involved and the song texts of their supporters. This article focuses on selected ZANU-PF and MDC song texts with a view to demonstrating that both ZANU-PF and MDC rely on the logic of mutual exclusion in policing inter- and intra-party national leadership contestations. Through an analysis of images and viewpoints deployed in the selected songs to depict the qualities of political leaders in ZANU-PF and MDC as antithetical, the article argues that the musicians’ reluctance and/or failure to rise above the myth of the leaders of their respective political parties as the best ever to emerge in Zimbabwean politics serves to oversimplify a highly intricate national political question. Inter alia, the article addresses the volition in scholarship on contemporary Zimbabwe to exclusively associate patriotic narratives with ZANU-PF, in addition to challenging Zimbabweans to think beyond identities that limit them as members of specific political parties.

Global Arts Leadership: An Exploration of Professional Standards and Demands in Arts Management

The arts are an important medium to understand and communicate across differences. Yet the question of global leadership as an expectation of arts management largely remains unanswered. Framed by leadership theory, this research explores the expectation of and demand for global arts leadership in an increasingly global environment. The authors complete a content analysis of job description data for senior-level arts leaders to find evidence of three emerging global leadership competencies: emotional, cultural, and systems intelligences. The study concludes with a typology for global arts leadership, and contributes to the traditional notion of leadership in the arts management context.

A question of leadership?

AbstractIn both domestic and foreign policy, having the right policies is not enough; Labour must prove its capability to lead if it is to win the next election

Asia’s leadership deficit and regional crises

Why has East Asia had such a poor record of regional leadership? This is an important question given the fact that East Asia is synonymous with remarkable economic growth and development. At one level, the absence of indigenous leadership might not seem to matter. And yet, when America’s “long-distance” leadership is in apparent decline and China is actively seeking to assert itself, the question of leadership has assumed renewed importance. This paper considered the nature and importance of leadership and explores its impact in case studies of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the so-called “global financial crisis” of the late 2000s. At this stage, it is unlikely that China will be able to replace America’s leadership role.

Not Yet Uhuru: Irene Salami's Emotanas a Paradigm in the Leadership Question in Nigeria

Not Yet Uhuru: Irene Salami's Emotanas a Paradigm in the Leadership Question in Nigeria

Educational Leaders and Their Qualities from the Followers’ Perspective

Abstract Objective: The article deals with the question of educational leadership and the understanding of that notion. That problem is relevant in the discussions on contemporary education, which is demonstrated by numerous publications concerning such areas as pedagogy, sociology of education or management. The attributes ascribed to an educational leader (personality traits, attitudes, values, etc.) are varied and arise from different experience of the authors and the applied research perspectives. The article presents the results of studies describing the characteristics of an ideal educational leader. Methodology: The aim of the presented studies was to attempt to identify the set of traits ascribed to a contemporary educational leader and determine to what extent the respondents identify those traits as the ones they themselves possess. The studies have been based on the opinions and experience of the participants in the education system in Poland – graduates of senior secondary schools (2017). As the analysis of relevant literature on the subject does not allow one to present a uniform set of qualities of an ideal educational leader, the authors of the presented studies have selected 34 traits that are most frequently mentioned in scientific papers. Subsequently, during the first stage of the studies, a group of 22 experts was asked to select 17 descriptive categories (half of the presented set) that, in their view, most accurately describe an ideal educational leader. Afterwards, a sample of 108 respondents (graduates) was provided with a survey questionnaire where, using a five-point Likert scale, the participants evaluated the occurrence of a given trait/quality in the following contexts: A pedagogue – an ideal leader; A pedagogue – a leader from the past; Self-assessment with respect to a degree of possession of the listed qualities. The studies were conducted in Google Forms technology with the randomisation of all the studied qualities of a leader for each of the questions and each of the respondents. The constructed non-random purposive sample consisted of the graduates of general education, technical and vocational senior secondary schools from cities with population exceeding 500,000 inhabitants. Men constituted 27.8% of the sample. Findings: According to the respondents, the key traits in this case (a pedagogue – an ideal leader) included the ability to motivate others, psychological and pedagogical sensitivity and being a moral authority. The results relating to the educational leader from the past show a slightly different order of the key qualities resulting from the respondents’ own experience. The first place was taken by high intellectual capabilities. It was followed by the ability to motivate others and being a moral authority. When conducting self-assessment with respect to the listed leadership qualities, the participants indicated that the qualities they possessed to the greatest degree included psychological and pedagogical sensitivity, the ability to interpret other people’s expectations and the ability to plan the necessary changes. The achieved results also show that the averaged ( ) self-assessment regarding the degree of possession of all the leadership qualities in comparison to the qualities ascribed to an ideal leader is lower by 21.97%. At the stage of designing the studies, it may have been expected that more significant differences would be revealed between the imagined ideal type of a leader and the self-assessment of the graduates with respect to leadership predisposition/qualities. Value Added: In summary, the applied quantitative method of measurement allows one to confirm the accuracy of the set of leadership qualities determined on the basis of the relevant literature on the subject. According to the opinions of the graduates taking part in the study (former participants of leadership relationships), it correctly describes an educational leader. That knowledge may have practical application, especially in the conscious building of leadership in the educational environment. This is because it may be assumed that the stronger the correspondence of the set of qualities of an educational leader with the expectations of the followers, the better the chance for the creation of an effective leadership relationship. Recommendations: The perspective of the “followers” who have their own individual experience with respect to relationships with “educational leaders” seems to be worth exploring further. The analysis of available publications on the subject in question gives grounds for posing a question to what extent the postulated image of the educational leader has any empirical foundations and to what degree it is rather a speculation or intuition of numerous authors.

Theorizing the role of executive heads in international organizations

International Relations scholars have long neglected the question of leadership in international organizations. The structural turn in International Relations led to an aversion to analysing or theorizing the impact of individuals. Yet, empirical studies suggest that different leaders affect the extent to which international organizations facilitate cooperation among states and/or the capacity of a global agency to deliver public goods. It is difficult to study how and under what conditions leaders have an impact due to the challenges of attributing outcomes to a particular leader and great variation in their powers and operating context. We offer a starting point for overcoming these challenges. We identify three different types of constraints that executive heads face: legal-political, resource and bureaucratic. We argue that leaders can navigate and push back on each of these constraints and provide illustrations of this, drawing on existing literature and interviews with executive heads and senior management of international organizations. Executive heads of international organizations may operate in a constrained environment but this should not stop scholars from studying their impact.