JOOP Call for Papers

Special Section - Call for Papers

African Leadership and Management

Guest Editors: Fred O. Walumbwa (Arizona State University, USA); Bruce J. Avolio (University of Washington, USA); and Sam Aryee (Aston University, UK).

The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP) announces a special section focusing on African leadership and management. It is anticipated that the special section will be published in the September 2011 issue of JOOP.

Although we are aware of some positive cases of leadership and management emerging on the African continent, very little empirical or theoretical work has addressed leadership and management in Africa.

This is in spite of the much demonstrated influence of leadership and effective management systems as drivers of individual and organizational performance.

The purpose of this special section is to bring together a compendium of papers that begin to advance a science of leadership and management in the African context with the goal of examining what is unique, what generalizes, and what doesn’t generalize from the West and East to Africa, as well as within different regions of Africa itself. By focusing on theory-guided (or grounded theory-based) research, we hope to not only stimulate a greater integration of leadership and management research, but more importantly to provide a forum for the critical analysis of theory and research on African leadership and management, and to propose constructive alternatives and/or future research agenda to guide work in leadership and management in Africa.

Therefore, in this special section, we are calling for a broad and indeed innovative approach to studying leadership and management that includes a better understanding of leaders, followers, peers and the emergent influences of groups, teams and organizations. We believe that such a broad-based focus is needed to help organize and synthesize African leadership and management theory and research.

Papers will make a clear contribution toward advancing leadership and management theory and research by bringing into focus the relevance of the African context to investigating leadership and management. Papers will address, but are not necessarily restricted to, the following topics:

• Historical context in which African leadership/organizations are embedded, including the economic, social and political forces shaping leadership and management in Africa
• Leadership, ethics and corruption in Africa
• Cultural differences compared to Western and Eastern societies
• Within-African cultural differences impacting leadership and management
• Strategies, models, and methods for developing leaders in Africa
• Unique philosophical frameworks shaping African leadership (e.g., Ubuntu)
• Globalization’s impact on African leadership values, norms, behaviours and expectations
• Generational differences in African leaders and followers
• NGOs and African leadership models