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

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

Network dynamics and the internationalisation process of small advertising agencies

Process-based international strategy studies are few in the service sector, and even fewer in the case of professional services. This paper presents a qualitative study which examines international network dynamics, practices and processes of small advertising agencies (SMAs). Using case studies of four SMAs, a conceptual framework pertaining to their international evolution is examined, exploring how they moved from their initial triggers to internationalise, their early internationalisation phase and further internationalisation. In the main, the paper contributes towards unravelling how SMAs exploit their network relationships for international advantage. The findings show that while network structure and ties represent a valuable intangible resource for SMAs, they are also unique for each firm and change continuously with their evolving strategic priorities. In so doing, such ties have varying influence on the pace, pattern and direction of internationalisation. Relevant literatures on the manufacturing and service experiences of small firm internationalisation are drawn from and extended where appropriate