The Impact Of Culture On South African Leadership

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The Impact of Culture on South African Leadership By: SW Van Der Merwe 2008 The Impact of Culture on South African Leadership Index A. Background 3 B. Social Constructivism and Leadership 5 C. Culture and Leadership 8 D. Organisational Cultures and Leadership 9 E. Moral Languages and Leadership 12 F. Conclusion 16 G. References 18 The Impact of Culture on South African Leadership A. Background As an executive manager and consultant working with numerous multicultural management teams during the past ten years I found that there are “restrictions” in management teams preventing them from developing well designed solutions, causing tension and sometimes even conflict. South Africa has a very unique multicultural society where different cultures come together to form the “rainbow” nation. Unfortunately this uniqueness can be a burden if it is not understood and managed properly. People from different cultures do have different values and perceptions. Cook (1990:1) makes the following very powerful statement; “We are products of our time and our environment, we do not operate in a vacuum, the decisions we make are influenced by the world we inhabit”. By saying this he says that the society in which we grew up, and still live in, determines our way of thinking as well as the way we make decisions. Cook emphasizes the fact that whatever people do, think, or say we are merely functions of the paradigm within which we live. In the business environment leaders make decisions based on previous experiences. These experiences include cultural exposure, the environment in which we grew up, life experiences, as well as previous working experiences. By saying this, we actually say that our experiences
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