Welcome to the House of Fun: Work Space and Social Identity

Following the diffusion of HRM as the dominant legitimating managerial ideology, some employers have started to see the built working environment as a component in managing organisational culture and employee commitment. A good example is where the work space is designed to support a range of officially encouraged ‘fun’ activities at work. Drawing on recent research literature and from media reports of contemporary developments, this paper explores the consequences of such developments for employees’ social identity formation and maintenance, with a particular focus on the office and customer service centre. Our analysis suggests that management’s attempts to determine what is deemed fun may not only be resented by workers because it intrudes on their existing private identities but also because it seeks to re-shape their values and expression

Cross cultural trespass: Assessing African anti-corruption capacity

The African Union and the African Development Bank estimate that corruption costs African economies more than US$148 billion dollars each year. This leads to a loss of 50% in tax revenue, increases the cost of African goods by as much as 20% and eats away 25% of Africa's GDP. Little wonder that fighting African corruption has become serious business. One weapon being used in the battle is the anti-corruption agency. These are new features on the African governance landscape and are usually instigated and resourced by transnational agencies with a `development' brief. Yet so little is known about their functionality. This article, for the first time, brings all African anti-corruption agencies into a mega case study. Using a novel mix of data approaches the article identifies serious program failure across all anti-corruption agencies. The African anti-corruption project is crafted offshore, in social and economic contexts that are not sufficiently replicated in the African experience, and for purposes connected more to international commerce than human rights. The study contributes to a significant intellectual conflict in cross cultural management research concerned with the pros and cons of a universal management model. It does this by demonstrating causation between program failure and the ubiquitous application of a culture-free universal management model to the highly complex issue of African corruption. In practical terms the article offers designers of anti-corruption programs an alternative way of thinking about African corruption