highlighting the importance of contextualisation for effective leadership. How critical is Albert knowledge of the Ghanaian context to his success
This improvement was however a quick fix, and proved to have come at the cost of erosion of the Company’s underlying assets and loss of talent and institutional memory, which laid the foundation for a staid damage in the future. The challenges begun to show after his seventh, as the Company became over-staffed with competent people who knew little about the Company and understaffed with those who were perceived as ‘non-qualified personnel’ but who had learnt much on the job, yet were poorly remunerated resulting in poor motivation and morale. The obvious implication was that the Company faced erosion on value, leading to long-term decline.
Slowly and subtly, most senior managers developed high risk-aversion attitude and were unwillingness to take independent action. And somehow, most of them also had lost control over their subordinates. Most of the managers feared that they may be accused of supervising works which output would be judged as substandard. The managers were therefore reluctant to delegate and exercised close supervision. Obviously, were overworking themselves. Worse of all, Albert did not receive much cooperation from his senior management team in monitoring the activities and performance of their immediate subordinate. The effect was that those who mostly benefited from corporate recognitions and rewards were those who worked directly or were linked to his profession. For most people, Albert was only interested in those who unquestionably did what he wished in order to achieve what he [Albert] perceived as excellence defined only by the Company. Soon, the once loved benevolent authoritarian, who combined strong discipline and measured authority with fatherly benevolence, was accused of being an overbearing and a high demanding person who treated people as a commodity. The staff accused of being exploitive and lacked empathy.
Almost immediately, his leadership and management style was perceived as having a hidden and insidious form of discrimination. Ever more, the people’s morale went low with low motivation which resulted in high-turnover and absenteeism, and operations became increasingly inefficient and high-cost with low productivityand under-utilisation of capacity. His critics opined that he would have done better and achieved more successes, if he had not followed his perceived autocratic leadership style at the outset. He should have taken his time to study the people and to understand the Ghanaian humanism philosophy that highlights the need for recognising and respecting individual dignity and interest. Albert conceded that when begun he did not have any specific goals in place; he simply wanted to determine if the process would benefit Sunbeam. In his desperation, he said:
“Without a clear understanding of the basic premise of the Ghanaian; the strong belief that he or she also possesses the capacity for excellence, truth and goodness, and genuine human needs, interests and dignity was of fundamental importance and concern; and is capable of attaining self-fulfilment within the framework of sound business principle, I made some initial mistakes. I wanted to see how doing business in Ghana truly was, and I really wanted to see how the employees in the trenches evaluated the manager.”
He added that:
“I had a philosophy that we wanted to be entrepreneurial and move quickly, but I could not affect the right changes and initiate new programmes when the time came. When we had some steady growth. I could not implement that appropriate solution to deal with the causes of the problems in the trenches because I, not my managers, didn‟t think through the implications of the management style.”
Having understood the true Ghanaian, he started a culture change process through the whole Company in June 2005, where all staff would be working together to increase the effectiveness of leaders at various levels of the Company. A new culture characterised by a clear, community/stakeholder-endorsed mission statements and a sense of shared direction, rather than a philosophy based on some ‘great men and women’ with certain preferred traits who influence their subordinates to do what they wish in order to achieve some excellence defined by corporate goals.
- How will you describe Albert’s leadership style? Does his style match the circumstance that confronted him? If not, what might be the problem of his style?
- To what extent did Albert’s leadership style influence the attitude of the staff in both the short term and the long term? Would you consider that his style should be the same towards all staff?
- With your knowledge of the leadership theories, provide an appropriate theory that explains the behaviour of Albert. Be sure to justify your choice of theory.
- “Leadership is contextual.” Explain Albert’s dilemma within the framework of this statement, highlighting the importance of contextualisation for effective leadership.
- How critical is Albert knowledge of the Ghanaian context to his success.
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