Abstract
Recently, focus on China in the world looks more closely at Chinese MNCs. However, the key role that China now plays in Africa has largely gone unstudied. It is necessary to begin any analysis of Chinese management and organizations in Africa by attempting to understand China’s motives being there without assuming it has the same motivations as the West. Also, more studies are needed to get the knowledge about what happens when Chinese firms go abroad, what Chinese firms take to Africa, and the synergies between Chinese management philosophies and practices and their African partners, staffs and communities.
Highlights
Sub-Saharan Africa has long been neglected by international management scholars, while China has been the subject of extensive study
The neglect of Africa as a suitable focus of study for international management scholars has meant that the key role that China plays in Africa, the implications for Africa’s development, the relationship with Western international institutions and the huge potential impact on management scholarship itself, has largely gone unnoticed and unstudied (Jackson, Louw, & Zhao, 2013)
Management studies tends to trail behind the other social and behavioral sciences in terms of applying critical theory. Such an example is the recent interest in Postcolonial Theory by more critical international and cross-cultural management scholars such as Jack and Westwood (2009). This theory focuses on North–South relations, where globally dominant modalities are not just accepted but are internalized by societies in the global South, and the modernizing trajectory of Western management thought and practices proceeds unabated
Summary
In political science and international relations the concept of a global North–South divide, which arose after WWII, was consolidated in what has been referred to as the Brandt Line, conceptualized by the former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1980 as an imaginary line delineating the boundary between the industrial North and the poorer South, a political geography that had mostly eclipsed the divide between East and West. This theory of development became known as the “Washington Consensus” China’s motive in Africa because it was so closely linked to the economic and political position of the US, as well as the location of these supranational organizations in Certainly China’s motive has been commerce rather than stressing a the US’s capitol. Just as the way that the West’s resource-seeking motives for being in Africa may have been modified by a civilizing and proselytizing ethos, so China’s resource-seeking motive may be moderated by the nature of its socio-political engagement This appears different from the socio-political interventionist development programs of the West premised on the civilizing missions of previous centuries. Rather, according to Nyiri (2006: 104) it involves concepts of modernization and productivity together with community harmony, which are demonstrated by, for example, entrepreneurial success, rather than “educating or ‘reforming’ natives.”
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