12713: Management Studies Drawing on African Empirical Settings: How to Review Fragmented Literatures?

Launched on 13 November 2024, the Network for Practice and Process Management Studies Drawing on African Empirical Settings (the Network) brings together management scholars from the global North and the global South into conversations about management practices localised to Africa. Five decentralised working groups within the Network explore the distinct topical areas of Strategy-as-Practice, entrepreneurship, organisation and work practices, sustainability and innovation with practice-based sensitivity. A key goal of the individual working groups, and the Network as a whole, is to review – with practice-based sensitivity –existing empirical knowledge about African management phenomena. Reframing existing knowledge offers foundational understandings of what we know and what we do not know about the sayings and doings of management in Africa. Nonetheless, coherent academic conversations on Strategy-as-Practice, entrepreneurship, organisation and work practices, sustainability and innovation practices in Africa remain difficult to pinpoint. The literature of qualitative empirical studies remains fragmented and shaped by dichotomies, both descriptive (North vs South; haves vs have-nots; colonial vs postcolonial) and theoretical (time orientations, institutional logics, worldviews). This PDW brings together co-leads of the working groups, Network facilitators and a discussant into a conversation how to review and problematize existing management studies of African phenomena from a practice-based perspective. Scholars will consider ways to draw out knowledge about management practices in Africa by bringing together fragmented and divergent studies. The successful accomplishment of such reviews will contribute to formulating future directions for the empirical study of management phenomena in Africa by means of ethnographic methods.