Suchergebnisse

This book offers a comprehensive look at the current literatures and research based on empirical data from across different countries in Africa. It focuses on the work of leading scholars of management in and around Africa and the African Context, exploring whether we can at this point refer to 'African Management' as an emerging and distinct stream in the scholarly discourse in management. The main themes are macro and micro issues of Management in Africa, each chapter illustrating the historical or traditional view of Management in Africa versus the newer western business management persp.

AbstractLittle is known of Caribbean people's views on their culture or of their beliefs regarding leadership and motivation. This study reports the results of a Delphi Technique with people in leadership positions and focus groups. Across groups, responses were relatively consistent: ethnicity and culture are described as influenced by religion, and Christianity in particular; African roots and country of origin are important; effective leaders are charismatic, visionary, results oriented, and they motivate others, lead by example, and develop vision and goals. Leaders believe motivation comes from making a difference for others. Nonleaders believe leaders are influenced by financial rewards and self‐fulfilment; nonleaders are motivated primarily by financial rewards. The results are generally similar to Western beliefs, but some interesting differences are identified. Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Given the importance of understanding the context of management issues in the world, this article discusses the role of both emic (developing culture-specific concepts) and etic (applying concepts across cultures) research in the international management literature. This paper proposes a more comprehensive mixed methods research cycle that can provide researchers with a deeper understanding of the context in under-researched countries. Using a decolonial lens, this theoretical paper proposes that an emic-etic-emic cycle is the best way to disaggregate contextual issues in organizational research, particularly when dealing with human issues in management. By examining a research project on leadership in Africa and the African diaspora from decolonial perspective, our proposed emic-etic-emic cycle (1) stresses the importance of using an emic approach in addition to the dominant etic approach in cross-cultural management; (2) provides researchers with a deeper understanding of context in under-researched countries; and (3) contributes to decolonial approaches to management, which call for a symmetrical dialogue across borders which decentralizes the dominant Western approach, and provides a deeper understanding of management from an indigenous and local perspective. Contextualizing research using the emic-etic-emic cycle can enhance rigor and relevance of the research.

PurposeThis project aims to examine levels of career and life satisfaction among successful women in nine countries in the Americas.Design/methodology/approachA structured survey and in‐depth interviews were used, and a variety of occupations, demographics, and personality characteristics assessed – 1,146 successful women from nine countries in the USA responded the survey: 105 from Argentina, 210 from Brazil, 199 from Canada, 84 from Chile, 232 from Mexico, 126 from the USA, and 190 from three countries in the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, SVG).FindingsResults show no differences in satisfaction based on occupation or country and most demographic variables investigated did not have a significant relationship with satisfaction. Age had a small, significant, relationship, with satisfaction increasing with age; married women were significantly more satisfied than single women. Higher scores on self efficacy and need for achievement, and a greater internallocusof control were all related to higher levels of satisfaction. The relationship between career satisfaction and general life satisfaction was stronger in Argentina and Chile that in the other countries.Originality/valueExtends understanding of professional success and satisfaction, in terms of demographic variables and personality, as well as geographically.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare women's mentoring experience in nine countries within the Americas, and to explore linkages between personal characteristics, mentoring practices, mentoring functions, and consequences of being mentee.Design/methodology/approachA total of 1,146 successful women are questioned about their mentoring experiences as a mentee: 105 from Argentina, 210 from Brazil, 199 from Canada, 84 from Chile, 232 from Mexico, 126 from the USA, and 190 from three countries in the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, and St Vincent).FindingsMost of the women have more than one mentor. Across all countries mentoring practices are more strongly linked to career mentoring function while the age and gender of the mentor are more strongly linked to psychosocial mentoring. Mentoring from the perspective of mentee has the same directional relationship with situational and individual variables, but the significance of those relationships vary by country. A possible cultural difference is detected between Spanish and non‐Spanish speaking countries on the issue of mentoring practice.Research limitations/implicationsThe fact that the paper focuses only on successful women in this paper means the findings are not necessarily generalizable to other groups of women or men. The paper is also limited because mentoring functions are constrained to two: psychosocial and career. There may be more functions that mentoring could fulfill for the mentee.Practical implicationsCompanies' interest in fostering mentoring among their members, particularly women, should be aware that different mentoring functions are influenced by different factors. For example, formal mentoring programs appear to have a greater impact on career mentoring functions than on psychosocial mentoring functions. To support women in their careers, companies should institute formal mentoring programs; this is especially important in South American countries. Moreover, mentoring programs must be designed to be adaptive since the analyses indicated that there are significant differences by country in terms of many mentoring issues.Originality/valueIn the literature review, the paper finds linkages between culture, mentoring practices, characteristics of mentors and mentees, and mentoring functions, but no evidence that these linkages have been studied with a group of professionally successful women from different American countries, particularly non‐English speaking American countries.

This article contributes to the literature on cross-cultural leadership by describing the development and validation of the Leadership Effectiveness in Africa and the Diaspora (LEAD) Scale. The LEAD Scale is a culturally sensitive measure of leadership effectiveness in the understudied settings of Africa and the African diaspora. A combination of methods and four studies using samples from Africa and the African diaspora based in Canada, the USA, and the Caribbean were used to develop the measure. Using the grounded theory approach and the Delphi technique ( n = 192), followed by a set of increasingly rigorous tests including exploratory factor analysis ( n = 441), confirmatory factor analysis ( n = 116), and a test of measure invariance ( n =1384), we developed and validated a culturally sensitive measure of effective leadership. Our results demonstrate that spirituality, tradition and community-centredness are important and culturally specific components of leadership in Africa and the African diaspora. This paper provides a validated measure of leadership and offers recommendations regarding the use of the measure by managers and researchers working in Africa or with African diaspora.

Data provided by 7380 middle managers from 60 nations are used to determine whether demographic variables are correlated with managers' reliance on vertical sources of guidance in different nations and whether these correlations differ depending on national culture characteristics. Significant effects of Hofstede's national culture scores, age, gender, organization ownership and department function are found. After these main effects have been discounted, significant although weak interactions are found, indicating that demographic effects are stronger in individualist, low power distance nations than elsewhere. Significant non-predicted interaction effects of uncertainty avoidance and masculinity-femininity are also obtained. The implications for theory and practice of the use of demographic attributes in understanding effective management procedures in various parts of the world are discussed.