On 29 December at 10:00 Isaac Nana Akuffo will defend his doctoral thesis “The relationship between authentic leadership competences and nepotism, favouritism, and cronyism – the case of the Ghanaian banking sector” for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in Economics).
Supervisor:
Associate Professor Kurmet Kivipõld, University of Tartu
Opponents:
Peter McClenaghan, University of New England (Australia)
Maris Zernand-Vilson, Tallinn University of Technology
Summary
The study explored the relationship between authentic leadership (AL) competences and nepotism, favouritism, and cronyism (NFC). It also examined the extent of attention that has been granted to leadership within the context of NFC studies. The study first conducted a systematic review to understand the extent of attention that has been granted to leadership behaviours in studies of NFC. The reason for this systematic review stems from the fact that leaders are responsible for directing the activities within the organization and, are also responsible for ensuring that ethical standards are upheld. Therefore, leaders play a significant role in engaging in NFC. From the findings, it was observed that only a few studies considered the role of leadership in NFC studies, but none has considered AL. Therefore, the second study explored how AL competences would influence NFC. The reason is that both AL and NFC rest on ethics. While AL upholds ethics (Walumbwa et al., 2008), leaders who practice NFC do not uphold it (Arasli and Tumer, 2008). Authentic leaders are open, fair, objective, understand themselves, have control of their emotions or resilient and behave in accordance with their ethical standards. Nepotism and favouritism offer opportunities to relatives and friends without laid down rules within the organization. Similarly, cronyism offers undue influence for their political party members without due regard to laid down processes within the organization. Findings from studies one and two led to study three where the interaction between AL and NFC was tested together to see they both influence organizational effectiveness. Data was gathered from the Ghana banking sector using survey because the country is a power distance and a collectivist society which serves as the foundation for NFC as well as the recent banking crisis which was attributed to the leadership of the banks (Bank of Ghana report, 2019). Findings showed that AL had a mixed influence on NFC. Also, AL and NFC increased and decreased organizational effectiveness, respectively. Favouritism weakened the positive influence of AL on organization effectiveness while AL internal and external competences and favouritism had a significant negative influence on turnover intentions.
Please note, the defence will be held in Microsoft Teams.