Since the beginning of 2015, Research Tuesdays has become a permanent feature on the the Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership (ALCRL) calendar. The aim of these sessions is to gather all our PhD students to share their research progress and challenges, as well as to invite experts from the broader field of responsible leadership to share their knowledge.

 

It is through this endeavour that Prof Derick de Jongh, Director of  the ALCRL, invited Mr Dumisani Hlophe to share his views and position on responsible leadership in the public sector on 23 June 2015. Dumisani is the founder and Executive Director of the Kunjalo Center for Development Research (Kunjalo CDR), a premier leadership, research, and policy development institution that focusses on capacity building for higher organisational performance.  He is a well-known political analyst, researcher and a writer whose work appears in newspapers, on radio and television. He also held various positions in the private and public sector, most prominently as a Deputy Director General at the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport and recently as a manager at Power FM.

 

During his visit to the ALCRL, Dumisani observed that there is a high level of corruption in the public sector, which is indicative of a lack of responsible leadership. He argued that more needs to be done in the public sector to improve ethics, integrity, and good governance. He believes that responsible leadership needs to be demonstrated most importantly in the public sector through a shared value system and through unquestionable ethical behaviour.

 

According to Dumisani, the ALCRL is named after one of South Africa's great freedom fighters and  humanitarians, Chief Albert Luthuli. He fought for democracy and a just system of governance. Therefore, Dumisane suggested that “the Center should contribute to progressive, clean, transparent and transformational leadership by developing a research programme on the meaning and application of responsible leadership in the public sector”. 

 

Dumisani is currently perusing doctoral studies on leadership and organisational performance in the public sector and believes the Centre has the potential to make a huge contribution towards influencing the concept of responsible leadership in the public sector.