With the structural adjustment policies affecting most African countries, private enterprises are becoming more important, as nodes in the political economy, and as arenas for social discourse. The panel will discuss the role private companies play in the articulation between local and global systems, with an emphasis on socio-cultural construction processes associated with the daily management and organization of African firms.
Since the 1980s, economic crisis has been met with structural adjustment in most African countries. Long-established state interventionism is gradually giving way to liberalisation and encouragement of private sector growth, and some countries now attract substantial foreign investments. In this context, private enterprises are becoming more important, both as nodes in the political economy, and as arenas for social discourse. Within the setting of modern work relations, concepts such as tradition and modernity, globalisation and locality, rationality and morality are negotiated in various ways. Through these efforts, one may even argue that distinctive forms of capitalism are being made. Still, we know relatively little about the inner life of private enterprises in Africa, and the role they play in the wider articulation between local and global systems. This will be the overarching topic of the present panel. What do we know about current management and organization practices within African firms? How are they connected with other aspects of society? What experiences and identities are generated as they unfold? What is the role and responsibilities perceived for private enterprises when it comes to African development? What socio-cultural challenges and opportunities do they face? The panel invites papers addressing any one of these questions, their interrelations, and/or various theoretical and methodological ways of handling them. Our aim is to inspire future research on private enterprises in Africa, by mapping and achieving some sort of cross-fertilization between perspectives already being applied within this field.
In the new democratic South Africa, the government aimed at the development of the private sector, in particular of the Small Medium and Micro-Enterprises (SMME), to address the economic imbalances inherited from the apartheid regime and to create employment and growth for the African population. So it is essential to explore and analyze the characteristics of the African entrepreneurs, reconstructing their historical background, their investment strategies and the relationships with their communities. The paper focuses on a group of African entrepreneurs operating in the reachest region of South Africa, the Witwatersrand, who have been intercepted, though marginally, by governmental policies and development programmes for SMME. Through their life histories, it examines the perspective of the entrepreneurs about change in their status and businesses in the transition from apartheid to democratic regime, as well as the relationships with their economic and social setting at different level of interest (resources, community, society, global influences).
A research on wage work and family strategies, carried out in four firms in Luanda, led to the conclusion that formal enterprise work represents a rare but most desired type of activity. Beyond the (generally low) salaries, the attraction formal employment exerts is based fundamentally in complementary economic benefits employees have access to and in the increased social status they acquire.
What happens to private enterprises when ICT coverage improves? Does it facilitate the flow of information that, in theory, should reduce uncertainty and transaction costs and increase information flow? And what are the effects of this on direct, personal contact, one of the most pervasive features of African MSE economies?
Abstract: The paper provides substantial and current information on human resource management knowledge and practices in Eritrea from a viewpoint of general and human resource managers. Furthermore, a sample of 252 employees were included thereby contributing to the generalisability of the findings. The paper focuses on contextual factors to provide theoretical insights. The paper argues that some contextual variables impose certain challenges. However, evidences also reveal the prospect that the concept and knowledge are in place with some local influence. It also informs multinational companies that transferring managerial expertise to Africa may not be necessarily required.
This paper examines links between business and human vulnerability in the African Great Lakes region, using concepts from institutional theory, macroeconomics, and analyses of totalitarianism. Interaction between business and society is examined: socially, ideologically, and financially. A socio-economic model is presented, and the stability of current society is measured.
This paper explores the strategies of accumulation of two African entrepreneurs in South-Eastern Tanzania in the context of structural adjustment and economic liberalisation from 1986 onwards. The paper is part of wider research on the life histories of entrepreneurs in Southern Tanzania from the 1920-1930s until today. The paper will make sense of the constraints and openings that economic liberalisation brought to the various economic activities undertaken by these two entrepreneurs (including amongst others retail trade, agriculture, and the renting out of agricultural machines). This will be achieved by briefly outlining the pillars of their strategies of accumulation in the late colonial period and early post-colonial period, to then contrast them with their strategies of accumulation in the period of economic liberalisation. The sources for this paper are partly oral (interviews with the entrepreneurs, their family members and their employees) and partly written (archival documents the business diaries of the entrepreneurs).