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The author was invited to give the 2011 Inaugural Conference address of the Africa Academy of Management (AFAM). The purpose of this paper is to summarize the remarks of the author's keynote address, so as to make them more widely available to varied audiences and to stimulate research and discussion about the future of African management.

It is a personal story of an African pioneer in African management education, research and practice. The author also shares personal thoughts for building business schools in Africa.

AFAM and its members have a role to play to advance Africa's management, leadership and overall development.

The idea is not for others to replicate the author's journey but to learn from it as they forge their own.

To expose strategic management scholars in Africa, particularly graduate students and new faculty members, to bibliometrics, a fast-growing approach for examining the impact of individual and collective scholarly.

We review the bibliographic analysis approach by discussing its origin, development, and process. We then advance to a dynamic multilevel model that can be used to examine strategic management contributions at the individual and collective levels. Bibliometric analysis is being used extensively in such fields as library science, agriculture, economics, medicine, psychology, and more recently in management areas such as entrepreneurship, strategy, and international business. In addition to its wide application, bibliometric analysis has relevance for strategic management research in Africa which is characterized by major research constrains.

Illustrations are provided with procedures for conducting bibliometric analysis. We conclude by making recommendations on what to consider in using the approach for the study of strategic management in Africa.

We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the approach as well as suggestions on maximizing its potential.

The approach is an invaluable source particularly for graduate students of strategy. They can be used to supplement other approaches in the study of strategic management impact.

To our knowledge, this chapter seems to be the first to propose bibliometric analysis for the study of strategic management in the African context. In that regard, it fills a gap in the research methodology literature. It can therefore help graduate students and junior faculty improve their careers.

My purpose is to describe for strategic management scholars in Africa, particularly graduate students and new faculty members, dynamic analysis and its significance in the African context so as to assist in the study of dynamic phenomena.

I discuss various types and methods of dynamic analysis. Dynamic analysis has been used extensively in such fields as cognitive psychology, social psychology, and management in Western countries.

I illustrate the various dynamics by reviewing four illustrative studies. I also provide procedures for studying dynamics in the African context.

I discuss the strengths and limitations of dynamic analysis and suggest ways of maximizing its potential.

The technique is a source particularly for graduate students of strategy in Africa. They can use it to supplement other approaches in studying strategic management phenomena.

This chapter discusses a typology of dynamic analysis consistent with empirical or variable modeling approaches. The lack of such a typology in the context of Africa makes it a valuable contribution. Thus, it fills a contextual gap in the research methodology literature.

There is a growing desire for more scientific and technical knowledge regarding Africa. This is because Africa has the potential and opportunity to generate impactful research. However, this potential is not optimized because of several constraints, including the lack of systematic reviews and models of knowledge management and paradoxical trends in Africa. The purpose of this paper is to review studies on knowledge management and associated paradoxes in Africa and a paradox-conscious African knowledge management model. The autochthonous African model that the authors propose has implications for global knowledge management.

The authors review studies on knowledge management and paradoxes on Africa.

The authors propose a model and identify 12 paradoxes broadly categorized as industrial, political and social.

The paradoxical tensions characteristic of Africa may be considered integral to business and policy rather than local expressions to be solved through international “best practice.”

The model this paper propose enables theoretical and empirical studies of knowledge management sensitive to the paradoxical tensions associated with autochthonous management knowledge and autochthonous knowledge management.

Despite the growing economic importance of Africa, the region has received scant attention in the international human resource management literature. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap in examining human resource management (HRM) practices in Western multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) subsidiary operations in Ghana, which is a significant foreign direct investment market in Africa. Focusing on recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management, and rewards management viewed through the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework, the research emphasizes that effectiveness of the MNEs’ cross-cultural operations has necessitated embracing localization across a range of practices in accordance with the Ghanaian cultural landscape and specificities.

The paper draws on 37 in-depth interviews with managers and employees in eight subsidiaries of British, European and US MNEs in Ghana. Interviews were conducted in 2015 in three locations – the capital city Accra, Tema (in the south) and Tamale (in the north).

The research reinforces earlier literature emphasizing the importance of paternalism and family and to a lesser extent patronage, but presents new findings in highlighting the erstwhile unexplored role of local chiefs in influencing HRM practices in Western MNEs in Ghana. Utilizing the AMO framework, this paper highlights practices within each HR area that influences performance through impact on employee AMO.

The research informs MNE managers about the strategic importance of observing local cultural practices and designing appropriate strategies for ensuring both operational effectiveness and successful cross-cultural collaboration with local managers and employees in Ghana. It is suggested that if managers implement practices that foster and enhance employee AMO, subsidiaries may benefit from employee potential and discretionary judgment.

This paper contributes to a dearth of literature on HRM practices of Western MNEs’ subsidiaries in Africa by examining the extent to which MNEs strategically localize their practices to accommodate specificities of the host country cultural context and operate successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to review and summarizes the articles that were accepted for the special issue focusing on “Advancing Africa through management knowledge and practice”. The paper also provides suggestions for future research focus for researchers on management issues in and about Africa.

The paper presents a conceptual review the distinctiveness of the five articles in the special issue which focus a personal reflection about management research and education in Africa, effective leadership development in Africa and the African diaspora, performance management implementation in the public sector; internationalization process of African businesses with special reference to banks; and strategic factors that could be emphasized by African firms to improve their performance. These papers are synthesized to present a coherent management research framework for Africa.

African management research requires a strategic choice approach, which asks interesting questions focusing on issues relevant to the growth of African businesses and the development of African national economies. African management research needs an identity that is uniquely African such as the intersection of private and public (including governments) interests; and the blurred nature of the formal and informal sectors.

The paper presents some opportunities and value of conducting management research in and about Africa in the areas of leadership and also followership.

Over the last few decades, corporate environmental reporting (CER) has received substantial attention due to complex societal and ecological challenges experienced at a global scale. While there has been growth in CER research across the world, we know very little of the state of CER research in Africa. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive literature review of CER in sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate its current state, uncover gaps in extant studies and identify areas for further research in the region. We perform a metasearch on the Financial Times Top 50 journals in addition to wider analyses using African Journals Online (AJOL) and Google Scholar between 2008 and 2020. Though there is some progress in interrogating CER in the region, there is much leeway for further research into how public and private corporations provide an account for their interaction with nature. Extant studies have examined how CER is often subsumed within corporate social responsibility initiatives while other studies explore ways in which CER can provide accountability mechanisms in the mining sector of select countries. Important areas of future research include the influences of legal, cultural and political systems on the level of CER, the tensions between economic development driven by multinational corporations and the necessity for ecological protection. Finally, further research could investigate the role CER can play in encouraging specific corporate disclosures around GHG emissions, especially given global efforts being undertaken to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The purpose of this chapter is to identify African financial management practices, highlight their origin and explain how they differ from their Western counterparts. The study identified indigenous African financial practices using literature review, archival sources and library research covering the five areas of Africa comprising Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa Western Africa and Southern Africa. The study found out that pre-colonial indigenous African financial management features prevalent use of trade finance, trade credit management, investment management and accounting. While there is also evidence of modification of Western financial management practices to suit African contexts, it is on the whole scarce. This is suggestive of the fact that they were in existence in the first instance. The clear conclusion is that many indigenous African financial management practices pre-dated and foreshadowed their Western counterparts. Yet, it is confounding that this has been largely lost sight of, and both scholars and financial management practitioners depict the former as inferior. There is clearly a need to remedy this situation. Educators need to focus on incorporating ethno-finance concepts into the entire curricula chain from basic to higher education. The anchor point for such curricula is Ubuntu philosophy. Financial management practitioners, on their part, need to shed notions that the indigenous practices are inferior and seek to journalise their day-to-day work experiences to build a body of documented practice.