Visit of Prof. Willem Fourrie (Pretoria)
LI Post
Visit of Prof. Willem Fourrie (Pretoria)
On April 24, LEIZ held a workshop on Sustainability and Leadership with a lecture by our special guest Prof. Willem Fourrie, associate Professor at the University of Pretoria.
The first part of the workshop concentrated on the hands-on work of Willem Fourrie advising the South African Government and the AfricanUnion in the SustainableDevelopmentGoals (SDG) agreed upon by the world community in the 2015 Paris Agreement and the subsequent need to support general goals with governance tools such as operational targets and metrics.
The SDG Policy Support Initiative is a tripartite collaboration between the President of South Africa, the GIZ of Germany and UP. The South African SDG Hub aims to decrease the distance between researchers and policymakers in order to ensure that new research output is more accessible.
The second part of the workshop focused on leadership theory and the concepts of heroic bias in leadership theories and postheorical leadership. Here leadership concepts outside the traditionally Euro-centric discipline were discussed, such as the South African concept of Ubuntu and the limitation of it as a value concept tied to specific language group in Southern Africa. We also discussed the comparison with Confucian leadership concepts.
On April 25, Prof. Fourrie gave a lecture on “Leadership as a Social Construct” in Prof. Wieland’s class.
