Abstract
The paper is a discourse of why management theories fail, particularly in the African environment, and how to make them work in the context of Africa. The paper notes that most of the management theories are foreign to African environment and are inappropriate to African situations. It posits that a major reason management theories fail in Africa, particularly, is because they are applied indiscriminately without being circumstance/environment contingent. It therefore recommends that to make theories work in Africa, management theories must be indigenized, but beyond that, such indigenous theories must be circumstance contingent and managers must use them in a circumstance contingent way. The high points of the paper are that it brings to bear the arguments in the contingency theory of management and the relevance of the theory in management in Africa in contemporary times.
Highlights
Many management theory developers are more concern with and highlight companies which succeed with their theories and ignore the whole lot which fail applying their theories
The situation has led users and developers of management theories to ask several questions including, why problems can be unyielding to solution methods and processes? Why would preferred methods and processes derived from the relevant theories not work? Why are the applications of theories failing to yield the solutions to enterprise problems? Are the theories not workable in our today’s environment? Why did they work before now? These questions culminate into the central question in this paper: Why do management theories fail, in certain environments? Answering this question is the thrust of this paper
Why don’t management theories work in African organizations? Management theories have their roots in the west and are developed based on the environment of the western world, and to put the question more strictly, as many people have asked it, is to ask “why don’t Western theories work in African context? or why can’t they work effectively in African Organization? The preceding analysis answers this question as that the western based theories are inconsistent with African environment
Summary
Many management theory developers are more concern with and highlight companies which succeed with their theories and ignore the whole lot which fail applying their theories. They highlight the success side of theory and cover up the side of failure. The situation has led users and developers of management theories to ask several questions including, why problems can be unyielding to solution methods and processes? The objective is to reveal the challenges in adopting existing foreign management theories, and, to redirect managers in Africa toward appropriate application of management theories in industry in Africa to ensure effectiveness, understanding that most theories in management have their origin outside African societies and cannot be expected to yield the same results in Africa since the social characteristics are different
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