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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.

Schools throughout South Africa, as with many other institutional facilities, are becoming increasingly pressured to reduce operating costs. Utility costs are often overlooked as opportunities to reduce school operating costs. Whilst environmental management is the responsibility of every school governing body, and should be addressed in a holistic and responsible manner, the reduction of water consumption may provide not only environmental benefits, but also cost savings to the institution. The purpose of this study, whilst reinforcing the need for water use management within schools, is to provide a structured approach to identify opportunities for water use reduction within these facilities.

Practical interventions, available to school management, are illustrated relating water conservation to cost savings and the preservation of water as a scarce national resource, assisting non‐technical school managers to identify possible applications.

Water conservation in the form of reduced consumption will have varied impacts. These include environmental benefits and direct and indirect cost savings.

The paper offers recommendations regarding the installation of pressure reducing devices, water strainers, and non‐return equipment, use of irrigation of sports fields and gardens, and regular and consistent monitoring.

As more and more organisations need not only be competitive in their internal markets, but need to be globally competitive, these economic changes impact on the content and context within which business education takes place. Company changes in the new millennium will impact on educational institutions, especially the traditional role of the business educator. As an example, due to the nature of companies becoming more and more information sensitive, managers and leaders alike need to enhance their oral and written communication skills. The pace of change within the economy as a whole is asking of managers and leaders alike to become more flexible and progressive in their management style, including developing entrepreneurial and innovation skills. Especially in the South African environment, it is important for leaders to realise the incredible potential in valuing the diverse perspective and talent of each person. The leader of the future has to learn to assist people of divergent values, beliefs and backgrounds and to weave all employees’ efforts into ultimately benefiting each individual and the organisation as a whole. Hence, what managers must be able to do in future will have a direct impact on what is needed in management education.

Western management philosophy and thought have been around for millennia; however, the supremacy of its concepts and writings has become a subject of criticisms in Africa. There is a huge gap in African management education which calls for redesigning of management curriculum to affirm African social orientation and self-determination that will enable new forms of learning and knowledge required to tackle complex global challenges. The objective of this chapter is to review Western management thought and practice vis-à-vis the existing management philosophy in Africa prior to her colonisation and advocate the need to redesign management curricula. To accomplish the aforementioned objective, this chapter took a historical, reflective and systematic approach of literature review to advance renewal of management curricula in Africa. The analysis began with a review of pre-colonial management philosophy and thought in Africa, followed by a discussion of how colonialism obstructed and promoted the universality of management. This was followed by a review of African traditional society and indigenous management philosophies. The chapter discussed topics that should feature in an African-oriented management curriculum and highlighted fundamental constructs that can be fused into management curriculum of business schools/teaching in Africa. The chapter also made a case for a flexible management curriculum structure that is broader than the conventional transmission-of-knowledge building which views students as passive learners’ by adopting suitable pedagogical tools that will be relevant for knowledge transmission and assessment and also enhance learning and management practices that is culturally fit and relevant to global practice.

This paper aims to report the efforts to reverse a dire research output trend at a Ghanaian Business School, following a similar effort at a business school in New Zealand in the 1990s. African universities are often challenged by resource constraints, ageing faculty and low compensation regimes. The consequences of these challenges are particularly felt in the area of the research output of faculty members in the business and management area. The problem of low research output has been written about by management scholars who lament the weak showing of African management faculty in reputable journals and top-notch conference presentations.

This is a qualitative and phenomenological study of an applied intervention. Using a combination of open-ended questionnaires as well as open forums attended by faculty members of the business school, views, perceptions and opinions on factors mitigating research and issues on research culture were collected and analysed. Descriptive analyses were used to collate the dominant views and frequency of mention of such views.

Using the descriptive accounts of faculty of the Business School, the research finds that a research-oriented culture expressed through factors such as leadership, institutional support, articulation or otherwise of relevant values have significant impacts on research output.

Based on the impacts reported here, this paper advances an intervention model to assist efforts towards improving the research culture and scholarly outputs in business schools in Africa. The paper also proposes a conceptual and research framework for examining and influencing the organisational and research culture of universities in Africa.

This paper is perhaps the only attempt to examine research culture in an African business school. It suggests that the research culture in a business school or faculty can be developed, reinvented or influenced and that research in African universities will not “just happen”, it has to be carefully planned for, nurtured and built into the fabric of university culture. This has significant implications for the growing effort to bring African scholarship in the management areas up to the point where it can more directly impact management thinking.