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The African continent is filled with a textured history, vast resources, and immense opportunity. The landscape of higher education on such a diverse continent is extensive and complex. In this review of the landscape, four primary topics are evaluated. The historical context is the foundational heading, which briefly covers the evolution from colonization to independence and the knowledge economy. The second main heading builds upon the historical context to provide an overview of the numerous components of higher education, including language diversity, institutional type, and access to education. A third section outlines key challenges and opportunities including finance, governance, organizational effectiveness, and the academic core. Each of these challenges and opportunities is interconnected and moves from external influences (e.g., fiscal and political climate) to internal influences (e.g., administrative leadership and faculty roles). The last layer of the landscape focuses on leveraging higher education in Africa for social and economic progress and development. Shaping a higher education system around principles of the public good and generating social benefits is important for including postsecondary institutions in a development strategy.

The world needs to pave a path towards sustainable development to solve global poverty and inequality, thereby ensuring that no one is left behind. The transformative changes brought about by the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), encompassed by the new world of work (NWOW), pose a significant threat to the displacement of jobs, especially in developing contexts, where many jobs are susceptible to automation. This results in a tension between the stakeholder and shareholder perspectives, which results in the phenomenon referred to in this study as the People Versus Profit Paradox. The purpose of this study is to determine business leaders’ perceptions of this paradox by generating an in-depth understanding of its nature and potential consequences. This study generated insights through a generic qualitative research design based on 10 semi-structured interviews with business leaders from multiple industries in developing countries. This study’s major contribution is the development of an up-to-date understanding of business leaders’ perceptions of sustainable development with respect to the 4IR and the People Versus Profit Paradox in developing countries. The two main findings of the study reveal that organisational purpose has changed towards a more inclusive stakeholder perspective, and that business leaders’ perceptions reveal a relative state of bias regarding the current impact of the 4IR in developing contexts. This study aims to inspire business leaders in developing contexts to embrace sustainable development and the disruptive changes brought about by the 4IR, to usher in a sustainable future where no one is left behind.

Virtually all developing countries, irrespective of size and level of industrialisation, are experiencing rapid urbanisation as limited land for cultivation and growing agricultural populations continue to expel families from agricultural regions into cities and large metropolitan areas. By the year 2000, the urban population of the world is expected to grow by 1,400 million, but 1,100 million of that increase will occur in Africa as the urban population of South Asia more than doubles and that of Latin America almost doubles (United Nations Center for Human Settlements, 1984). Within the next few decades, this phenomenon will present unprecedented challenges of massive proportions to policy makers and planners in these areas of the world. Relevant to the theme of this article, the land and housing needs of low‐ income and disadvantaged groups, in particular, will become increasingly urgent. Indeed, the central characteristic of the Third World urban housing crisis is the fact that the majority of households cannot afford the cheapest legal housing plot, let alone the cheapest legal house. Thus, in the developing nations of the world, a third to three‐quarters of the largest cities' inhabitants live in residential developments consisting mainly of self‐constructed dwell‐ings on illegally occupied or subdivided land with few basic services (Satterthwaite, 1983).

The last two centuries, roughly from the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, have witnessed a remarkable process of globalization of Western capitalism. The principal institutions facilitating this process were originally the chartered companies and, in the more recent times, the multinational corporations headquartered in the West. Search for global profits has always been the driving force behind this globalization. But the deeper inner logic of this process is capitalization on a world‐scale.

To examine whether indigenous critiques of globalization and critical theories of modernity are compatible, and how they can complement each other so as to engender more realistic theories of modern society as inherently constructive and destructive, along with practical strategies to strengthen modernity as a culturally transformative project, as opposed to the formal modernization processes that rely on and reinforce modern societies as structures of social inequality.

Comparison and assessment of the foundations, orientations, and implications of indigenous critiques of globalization and the Frankfurt School’s critical theory of modern society, for furthering our understanding of challenges facing human civilization in the twenty-first century, and for opportunities to promote social justice.

Modern societies maintain order by compelling individuals to subscribe to propositions about their own and their society’s purportedly “superior” nature, especially when compared to indigenous cultures, to override observations about the de facto logic of modern societies that are in conflict with their purported logic.

Social theorists need to make consistent efforts to critically reflect on how their own society, in terms of socio-historical circumstances as well as various types of implied biases, translates into research agendas and propositions that are highly problematic when applied to those who belong to or come from different socio-historical contexts.

An effort to engender a process of reciprocal engagement between one of the early traditions of critiquing modern societies and a more recent development originating in populations and parts of the world that historically have been the subject of both constructive and destructive modernization processes.

The resurgence of interest in public sector accounting has been evident in the significant growth of the literature concerning both developed and developing countries. Literature reviews in the area, however, have only focused on the former thus leaving a gap which has been overlooked for some time. This paper begins to respond to this lack in the literature by critically assessing research on public sector accounting and financial management in developing countries. The paper elaborates the various views expressed by writers in the field and also identifies omissions in terms of themes, methodologies, and methods. In particular, we argue that most of the mainly non‐empirical studies in the literature have been influenced to a very large extent by development economics thinking (including theories the relevance of which have been significantly questioned in that discipline). We conclude by offering some suggestions for future research in the area.

An anonymous Chinese quotation aptly describes the state of mind of many of us today. About 1,000 years ago, it was said, “When a big fish is pulled from the water, it flops about wildly to find its way back in. The fish never asks where the next flip or flop will take it; it senses only that its present position is intolerable and something else must be tried.” In the face of our current turbulent environment, many businesses are flipping and flopping about because they do not understand what is causing the turbulence. By borrowing concepts from two of the physical sciences, geology and biology, I believe we can begin to understand the forces that are driving this environmental turbulence.

We are in very deep trouble. This is not the pompous royal “we”, nor is it the “we” which may embrace our families, fellow citizens, or even our groupings of nations. It is the “we” of the human species — the universal, collective “we”, past, present and future. For the first time “survival”, as well as “development”, is the focus of international social work meetings. Survival is obviously a necessary but, as social workers especially know, certainly not a sufficient condition of human well‐being. The prophets of impending doom multiply in our midst, sometimes peddling their own particular brand of salvation, more often spreading cynicism and despair, foreshadowing a likely future that we do not want to know about or take responsibility for. “The future is no longer what it used to be” captures the current mood and reality.

Explores the study of peace and war as a reflection of equilibrium versus disequilibrium conditions as applied in international relations. Concentrates on the contribution of two economists, Leon Walras, deemed a classical master of integrated micro‐analysis, and Jan Tinbergen, a modern scientist, to the challenge or reaching and maintaining a universal and lasting peace. Looks at Walras as a social economist, his version of the social question and social peace, his sowing of seeds for a new doctrine of human solidarity, his resolution of the conflict between the concept of justice of equality and justice of equity, and his proposal of nationalization of land as a panacea for all social ills in a modern society. Compares this with a look at Tinbergen as a social economist, his holistic approach to theoretical analysis, and his solution to the World problems of poverty and political insecurity.