Strategy in sub-saharan Africa: defining a research agenda for Mauritius

Do African firms differ in their approach to strategy making? Are they any different to firms from other emerging or developed economies? Despite the proliferations of strategy and international business textbooks over the last decade, there has been very little on Africa. The answer probably lies in the predominant perception of Africa as a difficult place to do business. The region is often seen as a corporate graveyard of small, impossibly difficult markets, where war, famine, AIDS and disaster are part of a series of other intractable problems. Such image has not only widened existing divide between Africa and the rest of the world, but also tarnished much of the scope and potential of African businesses globally; and also hindered much progress in the study and understanding of strategic management practices of African business organisations. This paper proposes an agenda for strategy research in that context. Extending on the generic theoretical framework for ‘strategy in emerging economies’ proposed by Hoskisson et al (2000) and Wright et al. (2005), this agenda raises a number of questions and challenges relevant to theory and practice of strategy in the context of Mauritius. It is believed that there is growing scope for exploratory and empirical research that addresses the needs of businesses relevant to that part of the world. Indeed, the rapid pace of development of some parts of Africa is providing new testing and refining grounds of extant strategy theories, even with possibilities to develop new ones

Do African managers think differently about strategy? Some preliminary insights into the strategic behaviour of firms in Mauritius

Africa is fertile for business yet it hardly attracts the attention of strategy academics. International cross-cultural management and strategy literatures have long acknowledged the significant influence of cultural, political and institutional contexts on the strategy processes and behaviours of firms and markets, but there is limited empirical evidence to understand how these contextual differences impact on the way strategy is formulated and implemented, and test the relevance and applicability of received Anglo-Saxon or Western wisdom on strategy in those contexts. This paper addresses this issue partly. This research focuses on businesses Sub-Saharan Africa, and more particularly looks at the strategic behaviour of firms and managers in Mauritius. This paper aims to explore the perceptions and meanings of strategy amongst senior managers in Mauritius. Theoretically, the paper draws insights from the resource based theory and the behavioural theory of management to examine the varying perceptions and meanings of the strategy process – the process of analysing, choosing and implementing strategy - in firms in Mauritius. Using a case based methodology; in-depth interviews were carried out with ten senior managers of different size organisations. The findings reveal varied evidences of mixed approaches to formulating and implementing strategy within those organisations

Global vs. regional approaches to the internationalisation process of Nigerian banks: some preliminary evidences

Research investigating internationalisation process of service firms from developing countries is limited. This paper draws on extant work on internationalisation of the firm, services’ internationalisation and proposes conceptual framework that investigates the internationalisation process of three leading Nigerian banks namely; Zenith Bank Nigeria (ZBN)Plc, First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) Plc and Intercontinental Bank Plc. This work attempts to evaluate the internationalisation process of these financial service firms to the UK market. It seeks to understand the driving forces behind these banks’ motives for internationalisation to UK; the various influences that might have affected their decisions, the several internationalisation routes and strategies they might have followed in doing so; and the next strategies they might adopt in furthering their internationalisation process. This work contributes to some understanding of the reasons why service firms from developing countries internationalising to advanced locations like the UK. The analyses and findings of this study offer unique insights into the internationalisation processes of the three case banks, and examines how their different pathways was determined by a balancing act of leveraging accumulated global and regional strengths to achieved sustained international growth

Corporate political activity and location-based advantage: MNE responses to institutional transformation in Uganda’s electricity industry

We examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) employ political strategies in response to location-based, institutional transformations in new frontier African markets. Specifically, we explore the heterogeneous corporate political activities of advanced and emerging market MNEs in Uganda’s electricity industry, as they respond to and influence locational advantage using diverse political capabilities. We argue that, in institutionally fragile, new frontier markets, Dunning’s OLI paradigm is more theoretically robust and managerially relevant when combined with a political perspective. Effective MNE political strategies in these markets rely on nonmarket capabilities in political stakeholder engagement, community embeddedness, regional understanding, and responsiveness to stages of institutionalization

Using ODL and ICT to develop the skills of the unreached: a contribution to the ADEA triennial of the Working Group on Distance Education and Open Learning

Innovation in technology is occurring at rapid pace thus shrinking the distances and making information and knowledge more than ever accessible to everyone irrespective of where the person resides. This paper consists of four main articles. The first one deals with technological trends. The second one focuses on the deployment and use of open and distance education mode in rural areas by documenting initiatives that embrace information and communication technologies (ICTs). Due to challenges faced in rural areas only a few success stories/cases currently exist and some of these are cited in this article. The challenges faced in the deployment of ICT enhanced ODL have been highlighted as well as the potential of developing and delivering effective and relevant ODL programmes in rural areas in order to ensure that issues of educational equity and social exclusion rural communities are adequately addressed. ICTs in ODL are perhaps the greatest tool to date for self-education and value addition to any community’s development efforts, yet poor rural communities particularly in Africa do not have the necessary awareness, skills or facilities to enable themselves to develop using ICTs. Inadequate ICT infrastructures in rural areas remain a major source for the digital divide in Africa and for under-performance of distance learners. The third one analyses the support provided to ODL learners who often encounter difficulties in completing their studies through the distance education mode due to loneliness, uncertainties and de-motivation. ICT has not been able to sufficiently support distance learners in overcoming those obstacles efficiently. An investigation regarding those learning supports has been conducted in ten distance learning institutions, along with an intensive literature review with the aim of understanding the high percentage of dropout rates of distant learners. The learners’ interactions have been scrutinized through content analysis of their synchronous exchanges, during a completely online course. After taking into account the limited technical and human resources in Africa, a technological virtual environment along with a pedagogical framework has been proposed with the aim of giving adequate educational support to them. The fourth article has explored The Open University (UK) and its efforts to use new technologies to deliver online courses to difficult-to- reach learners in prison environments. The case study analysed here is an international course (called, B201- Business Organisations and their environments) which also touches an African cohort of learners. The implications for designing and delivering online ODL to the complex unreachable environments of prisons anywhere, and particularly in Africa, have been discussed

Reporting controversial issues in controversial industries

Purpose: This article explores how companies in multiple controversial industries report their controversial issues. For the first time, the authors use a new conceptualization of controversial industries, focused on harm and solutions, to investigate the reports of 28 companies in seven controversial industries: Agricultural Chemicals, Alcohol, Armaments, Coal, Gambling, Oil and Tobacco.Design/methodology/approach: The authors thematically analyzed company reports to determine if companies in controversial industries discuss their controversial issues in their reporting, if and how they communicate the harm caused by their products or services, and what solutions they provide.Findings: From this study data the authors introduce a new legitimacy reporting method in the controversial industries literature: the solutions companies offer for the harm caused by their products and services. The authors find three solution reporting methods: no solution, misleading solution and less-harmful solution. The authors also develop a new typology of reporting strategies used by companies in controversial industries based on how they report their key controversial issue and the harm caused by their products or services, and the solutions they offer. The authors identify seven reporting strategies: Ignore, Deny, Decoy, Dazzle, Distort, Deflect and Adapt.Research limitations/implications: Further research can test the typology and identify strategies used by companies in different institutional or regulatory settings, across different controversial industries or in larger populations.Practical implications: Investors, consumers, managers, activists and other stakeholders of controversial companies can use this typology to identify the strategies that companies use to report controversial issues. They can assess if reports admit to the controversial issue and the harm caused by a company's products and services and if they provide solutions to that harm.Originality/value: This paper develops a new typology of reporting strategies by companies in controversial industries and adds to the theory and discourse on social and environmental reporting (SER) as well as the literature on controversial industries

Entrepreneurial team and strategic agility: A conceptual framework and research agenda

To be agile, responsive and innovative seems to have become prerequisites for long-term growth and success for any organisations operating in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. This paper argues that such prerequisites, in turn, are dependent on the organization’s abilities to harness team-level entrepreneurial behaviours, talents, quick and effective decision-making and related actions as drivers of continuous strategic agility and innovation through an effectively managed HRM process. It illustrates this argument by conducting a synthesized review of the literature streams of entrepreneurial team and strategic agility and developing a conceptual framework that links them together. Rooted in the micro-foundational perspective, this paper examines the relationship between key conceptual dimensions of entrepreneurial team and strategic agility; exploring the connections between these two literature streams. Our review postulates the potential value from a cross-fertilization approach and points out the future research directions through which these literature streams might be advanced collectively. Our paper sheds light on the relationship between strategic agility and HRM through the lens of managing effective entrepreneurial teams in differing contexts

Net Present Value Analysis and the Wealth Creation Process: A Case Illustration

This case is intended to help students on accounting undergraduate and postgraduate courses deepen their understanding of capital budgeting. We introduce a working example and hypothetical case to show that knowing an investment project’s net present value (NPV) is important but is not sufficient. Shareholders would also like to know how and when a project pays the excess wealth it generates. In the case we show in monetary amounts, how much each group receives in every time period; how much is received in the form of excess wealth by the existing shareholders; and, when does that excess wealth starts to accrue. The case can be used specifically in the final year undergraduate and postgraduate accounting study programmes

Reporting Controversial Issues in Controversial Industries

Purpose: This article explores how companies in multiple controversial industries report their controversial issues. For the first time, we use a new conceptualization of controversial industries, focused on harm and solutions, to investigate the reports of 28 companies in seven controversial industries: Agricultural Chemicals, Alcohol, Armaments, Coal, Gambling, Oil and Tobacco.Methodology: We thematically analyzed company reports to determine if companies in controversial industries discuss their controversial issues in their reporting, if and how they communicate the harm caused by their products or services, and what solutions they provide.Findings: From our data we introduce a new legitimacy reporting method in the controversial industries literature: the solutions companies offer for the harm caused by their products and services. We find three solution reporting methods: no solution, misleading solution and less harmful solution. We also develop a new typology of reporting strategies used by companies in controversial industries based on how they report their key controversial issue and the harm caused by their products or services, and the solutions they offer. We identify seven reporting strategies:Ignore, Deny, Decoy, Dazzle, Distort, Deflect and Adapt.Originality: This paper develops a new typology of reporting strategies by companies in controversial industries and adds to the theory and discourse on social and environmental reporting (SER) as well as the literature on controversial industries.Research implications: Further research can test the typology and identify strategies used by companies in different institutional or regulatory settings, across different controversial industriesor in larger populations.Practical implications: Investors, consumers, managers, activists and other stakeholders of controversial companies can use this typology to identify the strategies that companies use to report controversial issues. They can assess if reports admit to the controversial issue and the harm caused by a company’s products and services and if they provide solutions to that harm

A missing operationalization: entrepreneurial competencies in multinational enterprise subsidiaries

We seek to provide a comprehensive operationalization of firm-specific variables that constitute multinational enterprise subsidiary entrepreneurial competencies. Towards this objective, we bring together notions from the fields of entrepreneurship and international business. Drawing on an empirical study of 260 subsidiaries located in the UK, we propose a comprehensive set of scales encompassing innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness, learning, intra-multinational networking, extra-multinational networking and autonomy; which capture distinct subsidiary entrepreneurial competencies at the subsidiary level. Research and managerial implications are discussed