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This chapter highlights the characteristics of Asia through the analysis of policy-related documents by five donor countries, namely Japan, South Korea, China, India and Thailand. It will also examine the roles played by regional bodies such as the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and ASPBAE (the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) as the horizontal channels influencing aid policies in respective countries. Together with the analysis of the national and organizational policies, the regional process of building consensus on the post-2015 agenda is examined, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific Regional Education Conference (APREC) held in August 2014.

The analysis reveals that the region has two faces: one is imaginary and the other is functional. There is a common trend across Asian donors to refer to their historical ties with regions and countries to which they provide assistance and their traditional notions of education and development. They highlight Asian features in contrast to conventional aid principles and approaches based on the Western value system, either apparently or in a muted manner. In this sense, the imagined community of Asia with common cultural roots is perceived by the policymakers across the board.

At the same time, administratively, the importance of the region as a stage between the national and global levels is recognized increasingly in the multilateral global governance structure. With this broadened participatory structure, as discussed in the chapter ‘Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’’, the expected function of the region to transmit the norms and requests from the global level and to collect and summarize national voices has increased.

Africa's history of trade, production and financial services that propelled the continent's economic systems existed long before an era of colonisation commonly recognised as beginning in the nineteenth century. By the time the decolonisation of a majority of African countries was achieved in the mid-twentieth century, the African economic identity had been, to a great extent, relegated by Westernised methods and orientations. Today, Indigenous practices are once again resurfacing in Africa's ongoing search for sustainable development, with increasing calls to resuscitate and incorporate these age-long business orientations. This introductory chapter provides readers with a synopsis of all the themes of this second of a two-volume edited book with a focus on the philosophies and practices of Indigenous businesses, which, if successfully explored and scaled up, would make significant contributions to Africa's economic infrastructure.

For various reasons many organisations are currently introducing the new ways of working (NWW). By now, this occurs on such a large scale, that it becomes relevant to investigate whether the new way of working leads to the best way of working: are the measurements taken by NWW really resulting in pursued outcomes? NWW claims to make working more effective, efficient but also more enjoyable for the organisation as well as the employee (Bijl, 2007). In practice, it seems that more pragmatically reasons lead to changes in the way of working. In many cases this concerns the elimination of fixed workplaces, combined with the possibility to work from home or elsewhere, facilitation of working with new ICT, and establishing an organisational culture which aims at employee autonomy and goal attainment.

To answer the question whether the NWW approach offers sufficient tools to provide effective solutions for occurring objectives, we compare NWW with a scientifically established construct regarding work design: Sociotechnical systems (STS) (Kuipers et al., 2010). We chose STS not only because it is a comprehensive approach to work design (all aspects of managing and organising are addressed), but also because the ambition is similar to NWW. STS considers, next to the ‘quality of the organisation’ (which is central to most work design approaches), also the ‘quality of work’ and ‘quality of employment relationships’ as outcome criteria. With incorporating the latter two, STS distinguishes itself from many other work design approaches and fits to the philosophy of NWW as mentioned above. Important foundations for the NWW approach are the quality of work as well as the willingness to organise teamwork.

The comparison of NWW and STS reveals as most important finding that the NWW approach misses a coherent theoretical foundation for the design of organisations. NWW focuses on loose aspects of organisations, like workspace, work design, management, organisational culture and competences. This is also evident in the scientific research focused on NWW: many studies examine the impact of a specific measure (e.g. introduction of flexible workspaces) on specific aspects of the organisation (e.g. social cohesion). Due to the lack of a work design approach no framework exists to test whether the introduction of NWW fits to the organisation and how work is organised and divided. It is our statement that NWW can only be effective once a good theoretical foundation is provided for NWW and once a clear work design approach is deducted.

Simultaneously, the NWW practices provide so many relevant practical experiences on skills and information underlining the potential of STS. Currently, STS mostly is focused on work in industrial organisations. STS and NWW have the potential to mutually extend each other, while tools may be developed with which new ways of working lead to the best way of working for organisations.

This chapter discusses a number of well-known African Philosophies of Education (APE) that could significantly improve the development of an international educational leadership curriculum. These include Preparedness/Preparationism, Utilitarianism/Functionalism, Communalism; Holisticism and Perennialism, Ethnophilosophy, Ubuntu, Community, Reasonableness, Moral Maturity, Maat or Ma'at African philosophies discovered from papyrus manuscripts including Imhotep, The Teachings of the Vizier Ptahhotep, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, and The Dialogue of a Man with his Soul, Kemit and As Above so Below, etc. In so doing, I identify the salient values of these philosophies, bringing out their qualities as well as their limitations, and discussing ways in which they could be incorporated into the contemporary field of developing an international leadership curriculum. This chapter first reviews contemporary literature on African Indigenous Education (AIE) and APE and their relevance in developing an international leadership curriculum using a descriptive and analytical interpretive approach then proposes an epistemic leadership theoretical framework to guide the delivery of APE in educational leadership learning. Such a leadership curriculum framework could be developed as part of the de-colonial epistemic movement within the Global South. The chapter concludes that while the link between APE, policy and practice is significant and new in the context of educational leadership curriculum research, its survival depends on the establishment of such a de-colonial epistemic theoretical framework.

This chapter addresses employee ownership within a strategic human resource management (SHRM) framework that has gained increased attention. The study extends the configurational approach to SHRM and argues that the construct of the workforce philosophy is the primary factor that determines the coherence of HRM systems. In other words, the workforce philosophy propagates the idea that employees both deserve to be co-owners and must be taken seriously as such. In addition, the chapter argues that the HRM system should reflect this workforce philosophy: the HRM system should contain HRM practices that mirror the rights that comprise the very construct of “ownership.” We present the possible core HRM practices of the “ownership high-performance work system (O-HPWS),” which, similar to employee ownership, produces favorable outcomes. The chapter also addresses the important mediating role of employees’ perception and attributions related to employee share ownership in the relationship of the HRM system (with employee share ownership) to favorable outcomes.

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.

Religion and philosophy satisfy the basic human needs of understanding, belonging, and finding meaning. They provide tranquility of mind and satisfy the desire to be loved and lovable. However, they present their own failings and can counter each other in positive and negative ways, that threaten the communities of beliefs they form and their interactions. An appropriate institutional framework can control the fanaticism and sectarianism that can come with established religion and philosophy.