Renier Steyn, Pumela Msweli
Abstract
Ubuntu, a philosophy originating from sub-Saharan Africa, emphasises human interconnectedness and community building. However, the widespread and careless use of these terms has led to a diluted understanding of its true meaning. This scoping review aims to provide an inclusive conceptualisation of ubuntu and ubuntu leadership from academic literature to foster a shared understanding. The research strategy involved consulting ChatGPT for direct verbatim citations of definitions and characteristics of ubuntu and ubuntu leadership from academic sources. Eight distinct definitions of ubuntu and nine of ubuntu leadership were generated. Additionally, seven typologies of ubuntu characteristics and ten of ubuntu leadership were synthesised. The scoping review allowed for a complex and nuanced definition of both concepts, relying on the vast amount of diverse text data ChatGPT extracted from the Internet. However, despite the elegance of the ChatGPT responses, some inaccuracies and “fabrications” were detected. ChatGPT adeptly generated coherent and contextually appropriate text from diverse sources, proving to be immensely valuable. Benefiting from the advanced language model access to a large number of sources and integrating these, the resulting scoping review presents a comprehensive conceptualisation of ubuntu and ubuntu leadership. Nevertheless, the review is limited in its dependence on ChatGPT, particularly when evaluating the credibility of its verbatim quotations of falsified sources.