Putting TWU on the map
Professor Ruth Anaya goes global with research project
January 23, 2008
Todd Foley
Any student of Professor Ruth Anaya knows her passion for world culture. This is evident in her course material, her overseas study sessions and her cross-cultural experiences. Now she’s taking her work to the highest level of global cultural research as the sole Canadian among a team of researchers representing 62 countries in the GLOBE Project (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavioral Effectiveness).
Between November 1-3, 2007, Anaya attended the International Leadership Conference in Vancouver, B.C. There, she began a series of meetings with Mansour Javidan, Director of the GLOBE Project. These meetings landed Anaya as part of a full research project under his direction, which will focus solely on the civil leadership sector of Kenya, namely in the fields of health and education.
Her research will be added to a global data bank and made accessible to researchers around the world. According to Anaya, the research will also have potential for citation in publications focused on African leadership.
Anaya had planned on using the GLOBE as a resource in her study, but did not expect the leadership conference to result in this merger.
“I had already concluded that my research instrument would be the GLOBE tools. [The meeting] was somewhat coincidental, but divine,” she said.
The ultimate goal of Anaya’s work is to help develop the effectiveness of Kenyan leadership. This research has been recognized by agencies such as the World Bank; she already communicated with John Davidson, senior public sector specialist of the World Bank, for funding for the project.
The GLOBE looks at leadership aspects such as attributes, behavioural patterns and organizational strategies. Anaya sees her work in Kenya as significant because it will be the first major culture study of an East African country. She refers to Javidan describing Africa as “a black hole,” void of civil sector studies.
Anaya notes that the continent is practically blank when it comes to research material for literature; she found few resources at the TWU library.
“When we’re looking at development in Africa, we’re looking largely at micromanagement,” she said, noting that what the world recognizes as Africa is actually from British leadership; Africans remain as the “little guys” who work in the big tea corporations.
“Why do we have failed projects?” she asks. “I’ve always maintained that we’ve put Africans into positions that we have groomed them for what the whole organization’s Western structure was for… we’ve basically cloned ourselves.”
Over the next three years, Anaya will work with Lize Booysen, professor at the University of South Africa and head researcher of GLOBE’s previous Africa research. The aim of their research is to document the civil sector, learn how to empower the African middle-class, and step back in order for the nationals to take the lead.
“We need to begin from a different starting point,” said Anaya, “from the perspective of the people and what they value as leadership.”
She says this approach consists of an outside group working with the local group and thus forming a “third culture” between the two.
“I like to think of ourselves as a catalyst. You’re the ingredient that makes things happen; you’re not the primary player.”
Anaya says she’s most excited about “the potential to make a long-term difference in Africa through its own leaders.” This potential gives her the chance to empower one of the many places she calls home.
“In one sense I see myself as a globalist because I love every part of the world, and I could talk about many parts of the world through my work or involvement there,” said Anaya. “But this is where the opportunity has been for me, so I’m going to seize it.”
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