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The management and organisation literature often characterises managing in Africa as "the challenge of" and rarely do scholars look to the continent for novel ideas, inspiration, best practice or theoretical insights. Yet, in the last five years or so, the African organisational landscape has witnessed substantial transformation and renewal. While challenges of course remain, we now have a better understanding of the nature, scope and extent of management practices and the role of theory in unpacking these practices than we did a decade ago (e.g. Newenham-Kahindi et al. , 2013). Examples of the emergent literature in specific African countries include the relationship between human resource management (HRM) in Mozambique and business systems theory (Wood et al. , 2011), human resource practices in mergers and acquisitions in the Nigerian banking sector (Gomez et al. , 2012), cultural influences in small and medium sized enterprises in Kenya (Jackson et al. , 2008), the processes of knowledge appropriation amongst foreign banks in Tanzania (Kamoche and Newenham-Kahindi, 2012), and challenges associated with skill shortages and talent management in South Africa (Horwitz, 2013).
This emergent literature highlights the diversity of management approaches, the role of multinational firms, the changing employment relationship, as well as advancing new theoretical insights. Nevertheless, much remains to be done to develop indigenous forms of knowledge which are relevant to Africa and which address the needs of the African labour force. Studies that merely describe and characterise HRM practices, or simply replicate western studies do little to advance knowledge. The same applies to those studies in which the purpose is to collect African samples with little thought to the unique circumstances of those samples and the context within which they are embedded and from which they derive meaning. A similar phenomenon has been observed in the Asian context whereby the "exploitation" or "refinement" of western theories generates only modest contributions to knowledge and does not substantially advance understanding of phenomena in under-researched contexts (Leung, 2009; Li and Tsui, 2002). Scholars engaging organisational phenomena in Africa need to eschew such approaches if we are to gain a deep understanding of the management of people and organisations in the emerging economies of Africa.
We argue that there is a need for a shift in emphasis to foster research...