The Attributes of Mahathir Mohamad’s Leadership Communication: The Perspective of Malaysian Hindus Opinion Leaders

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-756-4_11How to use a DOI?

Keywords

spiritual leadership; social change; minority; leadership communication

Abstract

Studies examining the underlying assumptions of leadership communication theories, with a primary focus on Western perspectives, which specifically focusing on homogeneous societal culture and neglected heterogeneous culture. Intercultural studies have revealed culture is diverse, and not all assumptions apply to every culture worldwide. Leadership communication strategies in across cultural contexts vary, and hence the study of leadership, in this case, spiritual leadership requires studies across multicultural settings, an area this current study seeks to address. Under the leadership of Mahathir Mohamad (1981 to 2003), Malaysia witnessed significant socioeconomic transformation. His leadership garnered support from Malaysians of all ethnic backgrounds and Malaysian Hindus acknowledged advancements in a number of areas. However, as past studies show, Mahathir’s leadership communication was criticized for the marginalization of Malaysian Hindus. He was perceived as being more concerned with uplifting the majority community with less attention to Malaysian Hindus. This qualitative study uses the spiritual leadership framework to investigate Mahathir’s leadership communication based on the lived experience of 23 Malaysian Hindu opinion leaders. This study adds a unique perspective to leadership communication in the setting of multiculture, particularly when it comes to majority-minority populations (Muslims and Hindus) within the framework of spiritual leadership.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - S. Maartandan Suppiah
AU  - Chris Kossen
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/05/29
TI  - The Attributes of Mahathir Mohamad’s Leadership Communication: The Perspective of Malaysian Hindus Opinion Leaders
BT  - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Communication and Media (i-COME 24)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 108
EP  - 114
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-756-4_11
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-756-4_11
ID  - Suppiah2025
ER  -