Still the Dark Continent? Towards contextual methodological approaches to management development research in foreign multinational firms in Africa

Abstract

Following the widespread implementation of liberalization policies across the continent and resultant ‘subsidiarity’ of the industrial sectors by mostly Western multinational firms, management development in Africa has been dominated by Western approaches. The alternative is contextualization of research approaches that take into account the cultural and societal values of the people being researched. The article therefore proposes two methodologies believed to be contextual to management development research in multinational firms in Africa. These include indigenous methodology and postcolonial methodology. The two methodologies are complemented by appropriate data collection and analytical approaches, which have also been suggested. Data for this conceptual paper were mainly from review of extant popular and academic literature. The article concludes that applying the proposed methodologies could help tackle the neocolonial influence in African industries to decolonize indigenous people from Western hegemony and management development approaches that do not tackle the development problems of indigenous managers. Theoretically, the article contributes to literature on postcolonial management and organizational studies and, practically, contributes to alternative and appropriate approach to research into managerial skills development problems in Africa.