We had started to hatch our ideas for this editorial quite a long time ago. In fact, we were in the middle of assembling the Sustainability Stories special issue [Vol 19(1) of 2025] at the time. The main idea that we had, was to use an editorial to announce a new special issue, which is precisely what we are doing. This started out under the rather outrageous running title of “Business Ethics: Putting Lipstick on a Pig? ” We had flitted between this obviously provocative question and the much more suitable-for-polite-company question: “Is it really possible for business to be ethical? ” Of course, both of these may seem like rather strange questions to ask: (a) in a field that has been characterised by fairly generalised optimism for at least a century (see, for example, Filene, 1922); and (b) in an editorial in a business ethics journal. Nonetheless, assuming that we have not reached Fukuyama’s (2020) “End of History”, it is never too late to question that in which one might have invested one's faith. To frame in a little more detail what we have in mind for this special issue, in effect these questions define what could be a rather fundamental debate if the opposing factions were forced together into some sort of dialectical relation.
There is a strong sense within higher education, particularly in formerly colonised regions, that the cries to 'decolonise' higher education should be taken seriously across all disciplines. In this article, I recount my experience as a management scholar struggling to grasp the core concepts of the decoloniality discourse as I responded to this call. The outcome of these struggles was a conceptual framework, which I present here. This framework served two purposes for me. Firstly, it highlighted aspects of the colonial project that still persist in every facet of life today. Secondly, it provided a foundation for clarifying the central ideas of 'decolonisation' and 'decoloniality'. My aim in sharing my struggles, my framework, and these clarifications in this article is so that others might find it somewhat easier to attain a degree of conceptual understanding than I did.
Drawing on my exposure to the literature on decolonisation, it became evident that the word ‘decolonisation’ is used interchangeably with the word ‘decoloniality’. However, the difference between these two concepts has been articulated by several scholars in the global south. While there is still confusion at this very basic level, it is questionable whether any progress has been made to decolonise management education specifically on the African continent. As a result, it is imperative that these concepts are clarified for two reasons. Firstly, it is vitally important to surface and expose the various moments, areas and layers of coloniality inherent in every facet of life in order to nurture radical spaces for praxis toward decoloniality. Secondly, this paper calls on academics like myself that are passionate and committed to the decolonial project in the area of management to subscribe to the meaning associated with ‘decoloniality’ for praxis to take place. This paper presents a conceptual framework to explain the difference between these two concepts to make progress on decolonising management education.
This article presents a critical and comprehensive analysis of state capture in South Africa, delving into its historical evolution, structural mechanisms, and long-term repercussions. It also examines the extensive financial and social costs associated with state capture, particularly its role in exacerbating economic inequality and fostering systemic governance failures. State capture, characterised by the deliberate co-optation of publicinstitutions by private interests, has significantly altered the operational integrity of the South African government. By systematically manipulating state resources, elected officials and public sector actors have entrenched corruption, thereby undermining public trust and weakening institutional frameworks.
Numerous occurrences of unethical conduct by leaders over the last decade, as well as the proliferation of unethical conduct, have had detrimental effects on their respective organisations and businesses. The undesirable behaviour affects the ability of followers to voluntarily perform beyond contractual obligations. The article examines the impact of ethical leadership on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), focusing on individual- and group-level mediators. The domain of ethical leadership and its impact on OCB is not sufficiently investigated. The research focused on a South African state-owned company in the water services industry using a qualitative case study approach. The research findings identified group- and individual-level mediators and found thatethical leadership positively influences employee OCB. The research findings add to the literature on ethical leadership–OCB by examining how followers respond to the sequential mediation effect and by offering insight on integrating mediation variables.
This article offers a radical rereading of business ethics in South Africa by proposing refusal as an ethical method and an epistemic stance. Taking a recent editorial’s worry about a shortage of publishable manuscripts as a signal, it argues that the apparent quiet from African scholars is not disengagement but a choice: a refusal to perform legibility on pre-scripted terms. Reading the field backwards – from missionary schools to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) dashboards – the article traces how publishing standards, classroom habits, and review rubrics have come to reward clarity, composure, and tidy endings while sidelining grief, opacity, and interruption.Refusal is offered not as retreat, but as practice: honouring memory, withholding translation when translation distorts, and insisting on ethical sovereignty. Here, African thought is not context or case; it arrives as concept, setting questions and methods on its own terms. The article asks whether business ethics can learn to hear differently, and what changes in editorial criteria, teaching, and citation would be needed to make thatpossible. Refusal, in this framing, declines domestication, refuses to make pain palatable, and resists trading voice for recognition. It invites a field capacious enough for dissonance, opacity, and ancestral obligation – where cadence, pause, and address can carry argument. Refusal is not nihilism; it is the architecture for another kind of listening and a different future for the discipline. The wager is simple: if we change how we hear, we widen what can be thought, taught, and published.
BEN-Africa has rather a unique story. An organisation established in 1999 with the aspiration of furthering business ethics on the African continent, it has evolved into a respected entity that provides various fora to collaborate, discuss, and promote business ethics. Activities include seminars and webinars, publication of the respectable African Journal of Business Ethics, awarding of the Order of the Baobab, and the annual BEN-Africa Conference. But the real BEN-Africa story lies with the organisation's members, volunteers, and leaders. Here are their stories. It is apt to begin this story with reflections from the founding president of BEN-Africa and past chairperson of the BEN-Africa Advisory Board, Deon Rossouw.
The leadership model proposed by Metz, grounded in the African philosophy of ubuntu, provides a framework for understanding the traits of African leadership as can be applied in business. This article proposes an extension of these ideas by utilising the African concept of ukama to offer a conceptualisation of what constitutes environmental leadership in African business contexts. The article begins by drawing on key authors to outline the concept of ukama and highlights the focus ukama imparts on the interdependence between humans and the natural world. It then looks at the implications of ukama's principles in the realm of business leadership, illustrating how the qualities of ukama-infused leadership can be translated into managing ecological challenges. The article motivates the importance of such a perspective, noting the environmental threats Africa faces, the importance of incorporating Indigenous frameworks into proposed solutions, and storytelling as a practical means of embedding these values.
How do we listen to the unheard voices of the landscape and tell their stories? This article explores Hannah Arendt's concept of plurality, Ursula Le Guin's storytelling, and Aldo Leopold's ecological philosophy to understand and engage with multispecies stories. Through a storytelling session with a coffee farmer and a speculative interview with a mountain, inspired by Le Guin's (2015 [1974]) short story 'The Author of the Acacia Seeds', this article conducts a playful and creative act of fabulation. Moving beyond Arendt's (2018) concept of plurality, it considers a political space open to heterogeneity. This approach invites reflection on organisations' ethical obli gations concerning heterogeneity. By relating Arendt's ideas to Leopold's (1949) idea to "think like a mountain", the article highlights how both perspectives encourage a broader, more ethical engagement with the world. This interdisciplinary exploration bridges creativity, philosophy, and ethics, creating a deeper connection between humans and the worlds around us.
Sustainability is essentially the pursuit of intra- and intergenerational justice. Following from this, we contend that any form of discrimination in any context, including those arising out of gender, race, and the intersection between them, constitutes a sustainability problem. Here, we relate a journey of 'discovery' and/or 'confirmation' which we undertook based on the daily lived experiences of gendered racial 'micro'-aggressions1 of Black women working in the telecoms sector in South Africa. Our act of telling this story in the space of appearance opened up by this special issue is an inherently political act, making this article an example of Freirean conscientisation. Our hope is that we contribute towards rendering the forms of aggression related to us slightly more visible to anyone who reads this article, on the assumption that visible oppression is less easy to stomach.
This article1 engages with sustainability storytelling from the perspective of freedom. Freedom is discussed in relation to a politics of storytelling that can counter power. Freedom, it is argued, is enacted in genuine storytelling and is experienced between people. The conditions of the possibility of ethics in organisations are thus conditioned on the political framing of the spaces between people in terms of how they condition how people may appear in storytelling and how people together transform these spaces for future appearances. Arendt's ethics of freedom is contrasted with the concept of freedom embedded in neoliberal capitalism and related to sustainability. Genuine storytelling is to bring something new into existence from the condition of plurality and responsibility for the world. Storytelling presumes a space for plural political participation. Freedom therefore also forwards attention towards the material possibilities that allow people to participate and appear as unique subjects. The article ends by positioning Arendt's storytelling in relation to a storytelling model for transitioning to sustainability, which positions Latour's notion of Gaia as the centre of four storytelling cycles.
Event studies are vital analytical tools used to gauge if unusual investment returns result from events within defined time frames. This article explores events marked by the disclosure of administrative penalties imposed on South African publicly traded financial institutions between 2011 to 2021 due to non-compliance with regulations. Results reveal statistically significant abnormal returns occur in at least 70% of cases, with negative events like fines correlating with negative returns. The findings emphasise the impact of regulatory fines on the performance of listed financial institutions. Banks are advised to monitor and manage conduct risk systematically and carefully.
Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the African Journal of Business Ethics. As a journal, our focus is, and always has been, publishing scholarly research about business ethics in Africa. In this regard, unlike many of our so-called ‘international’ counterparts, we will never reject a manuscript which presents findings from some part of Africa with the line: ‘Unfortunately, your results lack global relevance’.
The rise of unethical leadership practices suggests a need to emphasise value-based workplaces and leadership, encompassing workplace spirituality and spiritual leadership. Most previous research focusing on ethical behaviour in the work context has been conducted with larger organisations. This study examines the influence of workplace spirituality and spiritual leadership on ethical behaviour within the small business context. A quantitative survey research design was employed. The final sample consisted of 385 employees of small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in various industries in a central district of South Africa. Structural equation modelling was utilised during the data analysis process. The study revealed that workplace spirituality and spiritual leadership had a positive and statistically significant influence on ethical behaviour in SMMEs, and workplace spirituality mediates the relationship between spiritual leadership and ethical behaviour. The study extends on existing literature as this relationship has previously not been investigated in the African small business context. Also, the findings hold practical significance for small businesses struggling with unethical behaviours and leadership. The findings of the study imply that a culture of spirituality in the workplace enhances the impact of spiritual leadership in promoting ethical behaviour in the small business environment.
The magnitude of South Africa’s diet-related non-communicable disease burden calls for scrutiny of sugar-sweetened beverage manufacturers’ business ethics in terms of the commercial determinants of health. We gathered and analysed relevant literature from five electronic databases to determine whether a communitarian ethic can strengthen corporate governance in support of public health. Twenty-nine of 648 results were selected for data extraction and analysis. Six thematic categories were identified: the reciprocal nature of the corporation in society; perspectives on ‘corporate citizenship’; integrative approaches to corporate sustainability; critiques of Corporate Social Responsibility; legal regulation to engender communitarian consciousness; and the social contract perspective. We found that in tackling the human and economic toll of South Africa’s obesogenic environment, a diverse range of theoretical and practical perspectives supports the concept that a communitarian ethic for corporate governance can normalise accountability for population health as a human right.
Despite the increasing importance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, it is not fully understood whether companies consider these factors when designing compensation plans for their directors. This study investigated the extent to which directors' remuneration integrates ESG factors. The study sample is made up of JSE-listed companies for the period 2015 to 2021. The estimated generalised least squares regression technique was used to analyse the data. The results show the shift towards the integration of ESG factors in directors' compensation plans. It should be established which ESG factors are pertinent in the South African context.
Inadequate legal provisions in South African state law have left whistleblowers vulnerable. Despite the existence of the Protected Disclosures Act (and its amendment) aimed at safeguarding whistleblowers, the law has numerous loopholes. The participants in this qualitative study expressed the view that the law is indeed ineffective. While calls are being made to amend state law for adequate whistleblower protection, such efforts would be futile unless provisions are adapted from reliable instruments for implementation in the South African context. This article recommends incorporating provisions from the Serbian Law on Protection of Whistleblowers as a means of offering adequate protection to South African whistleblowers.
In the past decade, Ethiopia has demonstrated a strong ideological convention to the East-Asian model of ‘developmental state’, which stands for state-led industrialisation as its underlying industrial policy premise. Nevertheless, the labour rights externalities of this industrial policymaking have been overlooked in the existing academic and practical policy debates. Hence, using qualitative empirical data, the article attempts to address the research gap by analysing why and how Ethiopia’s state-led industrialisation and the corporate behaviours of apparel-exporting firms, as well as their respective global brand buyers, have contributed to the existing poverty wages and repressive practices against the associational rights of local industrial workers at those selected apparel-exporting industrial parks of the country. The maxim of industrialisation with a human face has increasingly become a promising alternative to the neoclassical intellectual view of labour relations following its fundamentals towards achieving a more sustainable industrial development in a given state. In light of this human right imperative, the finding revealed Ethiopia’s stateled industrialisation has firmly embraced strong business-state alliances, thereby curbing the power of local industrial workers. The Ethiopian government employs diverse de facto or de jure labour control mechanisms across those selected apparel-exporting industrial parks of the country. This is manifested through poverty wages and repressive measures todeny the associational rights of workers. Further, the flawed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of employing firms and their respective global brands have contributed to the ongoing labour abuses across those selected apparel-exporting firms. Hence, Ethiopia’s industrial policy is expected to navigate a reasonable balance between facilitating industrial catch-up and ensuring labour standards for more viable and sustainable labour relations.
