Introduction to the Special Issue: Building High Performing Organizations in Africa

Following the 4th Biennial Conference of the Africa Academy of Management held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in January 2018 and hosted by the Addis Ababa University, it was decided to publish a Special Issue on the theme of the Conference, Building High Performing Organizations in Africa. To this end, a Call for Papers was issued to further our knowledge of how African organizations achieve high performance and what makes a high-performing African organization. The Special Issue also considered the Conference’s best papers. After reviewing the submissions, four papers were retained. Hence, this special issue includes four papers, the Keynote Speech and a Presidential Address by Baniyelme David Zoogah, President of the Africa Academy of Management. The four papers explore the extent to which African organizations strive to improve their financial and non-financial performance

Collective action for tackling “wicked” social problems: a system dynamics model for corporate community involvement

Although corporations have been often accused of exacerbating social and environmental conditions in developing world regions where they operate, there are companies that sincerely engage in community development initiatives and aim for the delivery of public goods in poor regions. Still there is disquiet on how these companies go about undertaking community development initiatives spawning various forms of criticisms regarding negative side-effects of corporate social action. By means of system dynamics, and based on the longitudinal case study of Tata Chemicals Magadi (Kenya), this paper develops a model of collective action for development. Thereby it sheds light on the variables and mechanisms that are crucial for making community involvement projects an overall success for all actors involved while benefitting the initiating company. The model highlights in particular the importance of “we-feeling” between all relevant stakeholders and of participatory community development capacity. The results indicate that collaborative networks actively including local communities may foster communities’ self-help capacity, while creating a positive feed-back loop to company performance. This study allows exploring new forms of social responsibility that leave behind corporate-focussed models for the sake of inclusive and participatory forms of shared responsibility, which is of relevance on both the academic and practical side, and may also be transferred to an industrialized world context

COVID-19 in Africa:Contextualizing impacts, responses, and prospects

It has become a truism that COVID-19 has impacted all countries and all people around the world, but in different ways. Yet this contextual diversity in the pandemic’s impacts, the responses by governments and other actors, and the prospects for recovery are only beginning to be understood. This is especially so for Africa, where, on the whole, the pandemic had a late start compared to other regions, but where the complex interactions among the disease, local health systems, and preexisting vulnerabilities linked to poverty, inequality, and fragile governance make such understanding particularly important. “Africa could become the next epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic,” though thankfully the rate of infections has slowed in most parts of the continent in August and September. Yet the risk of a second wave of infections remains high, and in any case, the effects of the global recession and of governments’ lockdown regulations are layered upon a context of widespread poverty and constrained states, resulting in severe humanitarian, economic, and social impacts, with long-term implications for sustainable development on the continent. Setbacks to Africa’s sustainable development agenda have global implications, and this is true for the pandemic also. As argued by the United Nations Secretary General, “Only victory in Africa can end the pandemic everywhere

Engaging fringe stakeholders in business and society research: applying visual participatory research methods

Business and society (B&S) researchers, as well as practitioners, have been critiqued for ignoring those with less voice and power (e.g. women, non-literate or indigenous peoples) often referred to as ‘fringe stakeholders’. Existing methods used in B&S research often fail to address issues of meaningful participation, voice and power, especially in developing countries. In this article we stress the utility of visual participatory research (VPR) methods in B&S research to fill this gap. Through a case study on engaging Ghanaian cocoa farmers on gender inequality issues we explore how VPR methods may be used by researchers to achieve more inclusive, and thus more credible, stakeholder research that can improve decision-making within businesses. Furthermore, we argue that ingrained social and environmental problems tackled by B&S research and the unique context in which they occur may open up new opportunities to develop participatory visual methods for social change

The impact of Covid-19 on gold and gemstone artisanal and small-scale mining in sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Ghana and Kenya

Artisanal and small-scale miners are facing unprecedented challenges due to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The paper adopts a practice-based approach to examine the impact of Covid-19 on gold and gemstone Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) practices in sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights the informality of ASM and discusses how the Ghana and Kenya governments' measures have significantly increased the vulnerabilities of the miners and mining communities. Based on a document analysis of the governments' responses to Covid-19, mining industry reports, and interviews with 29 mining stakeholders in Ghana and Kenya, the paper identifies the economic and social impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on gold and gemstone ASM in both countries. We highlight the key policy challenges and suggest actions that can help mitigate the negative impacts the pandemic has had on ASM, which include the need to address informality in the ASM sub-sector

Talking the walk: the deflation response to legitimacy challenges

Organizations need legitimacy to be able to operate effectively. Consequently, and just like their participants, multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) need to respond when faced with legitimacy challenges from external parties. We build on current theory to identify three organizational elements that can be made the subject of legitimacy critique – i.e., statutory procedures, objectives and mechanisms – and use these elements to structure our analysis of a conflict-ridden case concerning the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). Whereas prior work suggests that organizations can respond to such conflicts in a fashion consistent with either moral entrapment or decoupling, we show that organizations can also respond by deflating their statutory procedures and objectives. A deflationary response can help organizations maintain their validity by diminishing the ability of external parties to advance propriety-legitimacy critiques against them. By examining this alternative response, we expand the scope and refine the analytic detail by which organizational legitimacy conflicts can be investigated.peerReviewe