Leadership in developing countries: The untold story of seth leadership

Abstract

In the South Asian context, characteristics of corporate culture relate to owners (seths). A scarcity of accountability instruments, transparency measures, and meritocracy is witnessed in the Pakistani corporate sector. Pakistan's textile industry is struggling to meet global standards of social and regulatory compliance majorly because of seth leadership. “Seth leadership”, a concept idiosyncratic to Pakistani organizations as a “socially constructed phenomenon” has been underrepresented in the academic literature. Particularly, little is known about the characteristics of seth leadership. Correspondingly, this study aims to explore the characteristics of seth-leadership through the insider views and nuanced perspectives of social actors (i.e., employees) in seth-culture textile organizations of Pakistan. Rooted in the social-constructionism worldview and qualitative methodology 50 exploratory in-depth interviews with senior managers and young professionals were conducted. The study explored 12 dominant characteristics of seth-leadership, namely, informational politics, unwritten leadership, Informality, paternalism, favoritism, prioritizing seniority, resistance to change, control over information, quasi delegation of authorities, micromanagement, inefficient bureaucracy, and blame gaming. Results imply that the prevailing seth-leadership requires special attention from state regulators, moreover legal and democratic norms must be introduced for employees associated with seth-culture organizations. This study extends the extant literature merely discovering two attributes, and hence strives to contribute to the limited understanding of seth-leadership characteristics in the leadership literature. Directions for future research and theoretical development are suggested.