Exploring leadership issues in Papua New Guinea / Murray Prideaux

The practice of leadership in less developed countries, and Papua
New Guinea (PNG) in particular, has not attracted the attention of
leadership researchers with the same level of enthusiasm as
leadership issues in developed countries. This paper is an
exploratory study of the unique leadership issues in the Papua New
Guinean (PNG) context. PNG is a diverse Nation of tribal societies
largely organised on the basis of kinship and traditional cultural
practices. The unique context and challenges of leadership in PNG
are not adequately explained by the extant literature. However, ‘the
bulk of leadership literature is based on a self-limiting set of
assumptions, mostly reflecting Western industrialised culture. Almost
all the prevailing theories of leadership and almost all of the
empirical evidence are rather distinctly American in character’
(Littrell, 2002 p:10). Leadership theories based on ‘Western’ culture
are not directly transferable to PNG, whilst significant contextual
barriers act to inhibit leadership processes. Leadership issues
(Prideaux, 2006) were tested. Respondents reported that the
heterogeneous nature of the country, colonial history, diversity,
multiple governing systems, vast vicissitude of mutually unintelligible
languages, and societies based on patrilineal or matrilineal systems
are significant leadership barriers. Results uncover the necessity
for an integrative leadership approach contextualised to PNG’s
unique diversity and complexity, if the country is to fully participate
in an increasingly globalised world. Limitations and further research
are considered.