Abstract
M.Phil.
The need to involve stakeholders in the decision making and policy formulation processes has received considerable attention in research. The findings show that in South Africa there has been a biased preference of scientific knowledge in most decision-making processes, yet solutions could be enriched by non-scientific sources of knowledge and experiences of the people whose lives are affected by such decisions and policies. However, a draw-back in such a process is whether the general populous is equipped enough to be able to participate meaningfully in such debates.
The focus of this study was to explore the catalytic aspect of leadership in raising social consciousness to higher levels where it enables the general population to be able to contribute to transformational debates. The study used the current South African social system data. It seems the leadership in certain communities within South Africa may have an impact on the social unrests activities like service delivery protests, xenophobic attacks, violent crime, racism and vandalism through their failure to galvanise society on shared values and norms.
Managing complexity calls for more than just technical knowledge it calls for people’s ability to make adaptive changes in their thinking systems, beliefs and behaviours. It also requires the harnessing of collective intelligence and wisdom. This then makes it a leadership issue to catalyse collective consciousness to a level where it can influence societal transformation in order to achieve consensus on the distribution of wealth and to generally influence the collective to view reality through one lens.
Grounded Theory was the methodology found suitable in exploring the research problem because of its strength in systemic integration of data and its distinctive attribute of using participants’ voices in the narrative. The three coding stages of open, axial and selective coding were utilised in analysing data and leadership came out as the core category. A realist tale style of data presentation was adopted and this allows direct quotations from the interview scripts to be used in reporting on the participants’ experiences.
The main findings of the study were that a catalytic leader is a relationship builder who is an adept communicator and displays a particular character and behaviour that is enhanced by certain competencies. The emergent theory was on how leadership as...