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.

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“…Future researchers could employ a similar methodology for larger enterprises with frequent training provided to respective personnel. The effect of leadership styles (Ali et al., 2023; Ismail & Hilal, 2023; Singh et al., 2023; Zaidi & Jamshed, 2023), emotional intelligence (Saha et al., 2023), and training (Azam, 2023; Mahmood et al., 2023) could also be incorporated for analysis purposes. The proposed model could be appraised in different countries or cultures (Kroumova & Mittal, 2023) to determine the outcome generalizability.…”

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“…Besides, this style of leadership is linked with the notion or phrase "by the book", which implies that leaders manage employees by the rules and regulations laid down by an organisation and ensure strict compliance. Leaders who exhibit this style of leadership rely on the supervisor for guidance when the existing laws and regulations do not envisage any new situation (Zaidi, Jamshed, 2023).…”

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“…Following that, Zaidi and Jamshed (2023) examined a lesser‐known yet significant leadership style, commonly observed in developing countries, known as “seth leadership.” This distinct form of autocratic leadership is associated with business owners or entrepreneurs, often referred to as “seths.” By conducting in‐depth interviews with 50 senior managers and young professionals, the study identified 12 characteristics or instances in which seth leadership can become toxic. These traits include blame gaming, control over information, favoritism, inefficient bureaucracy, informality, informational politics, micromanagement, paternalism, prioritizing seniority, quasi‐delegation of authority, resistance to change, and unwritten leadership.…”