Contenu du sommaire : Alternatives africaines en management

The literature has shown that CSR influences the leadership of an organization. Our aim in this study is to go further by showing that there is an interdependence between the position of the responsible leader and the corporate CSR strategy of the organization. The authos propose a new definition of responsible leadership based on a dual alignment, alignment of the organization's and leader's CSR values on the one hand, and alignment of the organization's and leader's CSR commitments on the other. To do this, they rely on a qualitative exploratory study conducted in two companies known to have been among the pioneers of CSR in France, Danone and Essilor as well as the chairman of the Grameen Danone Bank, the Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. From 25 interviews whose content is analyzed through N'vivo, they show how responsible leadership can be characterized in relation to the organization's culture and commitments.

The article sheds light on the alternative practice of management consulting. Based on a series of interviews conducted with 20 consultants, the results show that the alternative character of consulting lies in its mobilization of secular knowledge beyond the scope of traditional managerial rationality, and is rooted in the material and emotional dimensions of work as experienced by employees, including marginalized groups. The action of the consultants consists of organizing the visibility and circulation of this secular knowledge in order to influence the subjective positions of the actors, starting with the managers, and set the organization in motion.

The various modes of proximity are frequently apprehended through objective measurement models. However, in their early works, scholars of the Proximity school also emphasized the subjective nature of proximity: this initial insight has progressively lost ground in recent research works. Our purpose in this paper is to revisit this subjective dimension, using a qualitative research. We have interviewed actors involved in five telemedicine projects developed in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes area. The main theoretical contribution of our research is to reveal how the subjective dimension of proximity shapes every of its modes, although in a dual and ambivalent manner. We evidenced that this subjective construct of proximity combined with the ambivalence of expressions generates the sense of a “global” proximity. We therefore advocate for a redefinition of proximity as a global compounded notion contrary to previous views articulating multiple modes of proximities.

In the orthodox conception of management, the necessity of « contextualization » has been for a long time missing. However, this is an imperative for anyone wanting to study African realities. Classical concepts of management but also alternative notions emerge from international research and the question raises as to choose a theoretical background on which such an African contextualization can be established. The article presents the contributions and limits of three theoretical poles: the culturalist, the institutionalist and the post-colonial. It concludes on several perspectives for a contextualized management research in West Africa.

The sub-Saharan African business model is very specific, particularly because of its capacity for frugality and agility, which would explain its dynamism. The purpose of this article is to propose, based on observation and theoretical under-pinnings, a description of the African firm in the light of five research proposals. In particular, it aims to show how the effectiveness of its anchoring and deployment could be explained by its frugal and agile nature. The results and analyses lead us to consider that this model has its own rationality.

This research puts in evidence the reality of witchcraft practices in the management of small enterprises in Cameroon. The methodology is based on a qualitative field survey and an analysis of three concrete cases of the influence of witchcraft practices on the competitive behavior of managers of small businesses. The results reveal three types of “agir sorcellaire” by managers in competitive situations and show that witchcraft knowledge is a competitive advantage. It exerts an ambivalent influence on the performance of the small business.

This article questions how the indicators characteristic of clan mechanisms present themselves in the management control system of SMEs run by Africans in Côte d'Ivoire. The empirical analysis, based on a qualitative and abductive approach, uses data relating to forty (40) SMEs. The results revealed that the SMEs using the clan mechanism indicators in the management of their activities are mostly small (between 10 and 40 employees), elderly (over 10 years) and most of their managers continue to growth of their businesses.

This interview with Saras Sarasvathy took place face to face on November 21, 2019 in Paris and under the academic sponsorship of Dominique Vian and Philippe Silberzahn. We discussed the African context and its specificities. It appeared during this interview that his research on the theory of effectuation and on the implementation of concepts, practices and devices that can be easily mobilized in the field are particularly suitable for African managers, even if Sarasvhaty's fields were not originally explicitly focused on Africa. It underlines the power of “action” and the “strength” of the entrepreneur's motivation. It insists in particular on the effects (performance) of the projects rather than on the causes, projects which by their simple deployment have the capacity to mobilize many local and frugal resources.