Dr. Kozhi Makai, who earned a Ph.D. in Applied Management and Decision Sciences with a specialization in Leadership and Organizational Change, was awarded Walden University’s Social Change Award for his dissertation, Culture and Leadership: A Comparison of Cultural Orientation and Leadership Preference Among College Students in Zambia and the United States.

“The study of leadership has revealed that leadership is as much an organizational phenomenon as it is a cultural phenomenon,” says Makai, an adjunct professor of speech at North Harris College in Houston.

Makai says much of management research—and its resulting theories—is Western in nature, and what is lacking in management scholarship is research that addresses the need for leadership thinking to be grounded in a particular cultural setting.

“What is needed in Africa is the establishment of theory and practice that is based on the real situation in African countries,” says Makai, a native of Zambia.

To address this need, his study looked specifically at college students in Houston and Zambia and posed several research questions.

The dissertation found that how members of a culture answered these questions—such as how they accepted social hierarchy and how they regarded paternalistic and heroic leadership—holds significant implications for what members of the culture believe to be good leadership and the type of leadership necessary to effect social change.

“Kozhi’s project delves into difficult but essential territory and has the potential to impact the decisions of large-scale organizations such as the World Bank,” wrote his dissertation committee members, Drs. Stephanie Cawthon, Ruth Achterhof, and Stephanie Lyncheski, in a letter nominating Makai for the award.

Makai is working on adopting his dissertation findings for journal articles.

“I will be submitting the dissertation for conference presentation for next year’s International Academy of African Business and Development, and for publication in the academy’s Journal of Business in Developing Nations,” he says.

August Ponder front page