costly and at times it may create hostility that may lead to sabotage of the organisation
from those in powers of position in government.
There is no doubt that most managers in these countries learned their management
styles over a few years of college education but they have learned much more from ex-
perience which has nothing to do with managing modern organisations. For some, the
only experience was from colonial masters where they were employed as clerks, for
others it was through working as public bureaucrats, and for the luckiest ones it was
through management of public enterprises (already dead and raised to life by private
investors) whereby using the rule of thumb was the underlying management philosophy.
For decades, managers have been operating in an environment where coming to work
late has become normal, working for two instead of eight hours a day is acceptable,
staying around with nothing to do is part of a daily programme, stealing company’s
money and other resources for selfish ends is perceived as a good way of avoiding pov-
erty and embarrassment at old age... the list is ad infinitum. Therefore, new manage-
ment concepts cited above and many others such as objectivity, honesty, transparency,
and commitment to work are as alien as the operating business environment today.
Some emerging powerful organisations have realised this limitation and have resorted to
recruiting young university graduates so that they can nurture them and develop an ap-
propriate organisational culture.
Although the fresh blood seems to accommodate these new management concepts,
paternalism remains a hard nut to crack because it is an integral part of the society. Hu-
man resource strategies may be there but favouritism based on family membership, ties
to relatives or other members of ones tribe, regional affiliation, and religion seem to
hinder effective recruitment and selection, placement, promotion, transfer, rewards, and
all other staffing functions. Too few good employment opportunities, poverty and the
growing number of family dependants resulting from the HIV AIDS pandemic exacer-
bate this situation.
Increasing globalisation is now pushing poor countries and organisations to adapt to
the way of thinking and doing that the developed world uses. The main drivers for
change are major world institutions including the World Bank, the International Mone-
tary Fund, and the International Finance Capital and Multinational Corporations. These
institutions determine and control capital flows to poor countries in the form of condi-
tions including the production of viable strategic business plans.
Some specific human resource management cases from Africa
The general literature on strategic human resource management in Africa is scant and
where available, it is not updated and mainly concludes that strategic human resources
hardly exist. The major reasons include lack of colonialists’ readiness to prepare Afri-
can managers to think strategically, a culture that does not promote the spirit of creativ-
ity, innovation and risk taking. This is coupled with a long history of the dominance of
bureaucratic public enterprises and strong political influence and patriotism (Kamoche
et al. 2004; Budhwar & Debrah 2004). Now the focus is more on institutionalisation of
western styles of management through sectoral reforms and the creation of an enabling
environment for multinational corporations, which are emerging with some kind of a
hybrid management culture.
For example, Swiss port (T) Ltd was established in 2005 as a result of a partnership
between the then Dar es Salaam Airport handling Company Ltd of Tanzania and Swiss