South Africa have some of the lowest employee engagement scores in the world. Leadership is a key determinant of employee engagement, but existing leadership theories and practices are often ineffective in more humanistic and collectivistic cultures like South Africa. To this end, Ubuntu and servant leadership is posited to positively influence organisational performance by increasing employee engagement. The primary objective of this study is to investigate perceptions regarding the impact of Ubuntu and servant leadership on employee engagement in private organisations of the Eastern Cape. A quantitative research design was utilised and yielded 428 usable questionnaires through nonprobability sampling. The empirical results revealed that the spirit of solidarity dimension of Ubuntu leadership influenced significantly and positively. Furthermore, it was found that survival and spirit of solidarity had a significant and positive influence on organisational performance as measured through the balanced scorecard (BSC). Servant leadership positively and significantly influenced employee engagement and organisational performance. In addition, it was found that employee engagement mediates the relationship between servant leadership and organizational performance. This study has made several significant empirical and theoretical contributions, and can be classified as one of the pioneering attempts to gather empirical evidence on how Ubuntu manifests in the workplace. The high convergent validity of the dimensions of Ubuntu leadership and comparisons to Servant leadership established in this study, provides some proof of its novel contribution towards leadership theory. A highly reliable and valid measuring instrument was developed to evaluate Ubuntu from a leadership perspective. This is a major empirical contribution as, at the time, there were no reliable scales available in South Africa to measure Ubuntu leadership.

Since the dissolution of apartheid, corporate governance in South Africa has evolved from being a soft mainly ethical issue to a hard knowledge-based technological issue, recognised as pivotal to the success and revitalisation of the country’s capital markets and, ultimately, the prospects of the corporate economy. These high stakes have produced a succession of measures aimed at transforming corporate governance in the economy. As such, South Africa’s corporate managers are consistently faced with the seemingly unassailable obstacle of discerning and implementing technologically progressive and culturally/racially unbiased management strategies/systems. The focus of this thesis is the latter of these two obstacles. Ubuntu acts as the scope via which the issues embedded within the incumbent management strategies/systems are viewed. Ubuntu philosophy embodies a socio-cultural framework that applies to all individuals and institutions throughout the continent. It embodies collectivism and teamwork, creation of synergies and competitive advantages, humanist leadership styles and maturity, consensus in decision-making systems, effective communication, and community-based corporate social responsibility. Ubuntu is pervasive in almost all parts of Southern African continent – it is integrated into all aspects of day-to-day life throughout the region. This thesis reviews and analyses some of the lessons that can be learned through the inception of African management, more specifically Ubuntu management, within South Africa’s corporate sphere. This thesis aims to prove that there exists a need for a new South African corporate management system, one which is able to harmoniously integrate the incumbent, western-orientated management strategies and systems with one of African origins.