Purpose To explore the challenges facing rural entrepreneurs in adopting ecommerce in an under-researched African context, this study aims to adopt a multi-country exploration involving five countries and offers valuable managerial and theoretical implications. Design/methodology/approach With samples covering significant geographical regions – North, South, North-eastern and West Africa – this research adopted a qualitative method with an interpretivist approach. The empirical data was collected via in-depth semi-structured interviews with 30 rural entrepreneurs drawn from a wide range of sectors in Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan and Zimbabwe. The data analysis followed Gioia approach for qualitative rigour. Findings The findings reveal institutional voids – political instability and lack of technology savviness, social infrastructure and financial resources. Participants further revealed that these challenges result in loss of valuable opportunities for learning, communication, productivity and expansion, as well as inability to compete with their urban counterparts. Findings also highlight specific challenges facing rural women entrepreneurs – socio-cultural barriers and gender stereotypes. Despite these challenges, participants who invest in ecommerce revealed significant benefits – improved customers sourcing, customer retention, customer experience and customer satisfaction. The findings also reveal business expansion, enhanced brand visibility and improved supply chain management because of ecommerce adoption. Originality/value Extending prior theories specifically the Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem (DEE) and the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) frameworks; the current paper demonstrates how technological, organizational and environmental factors interact in an institutionally challenging setting and suggest a hybrid model unique to resource-constrained rural Africa.

PurposeThis paper aims to highlight different dynamics associated with social innovation and value creation, particularly by multinational corporations (MNCs) in the African context.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a systematic literature review of 159 published studies.FindingsThe literature review revealed corruption, nepotism, a lack of transparency and accountability, lack of trust in African government and numerous policy voids as barriers to social innovation activities particularly by MNCs in the region. Multinational corporations as well as social activists face further challenges in balancing the conflicting value logics between different interest groups. Also, the weak educational system, the African thought system and management approaches being used in Africa tend to limit MNCs' social innovation possibilities.Originality/valueThe current paper enriches Africa-focused social innovation literature, along with contributing to the debate on the influence of management thinking by establishing a link between the African thought system and the social innovation activities, particularly by MNCs in that context.

This paper aims to analyze the nexus of revalorization, frugal innovation, and the circular economy in the under-explored African used automotive parts business context. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with key players including dealers, mechanics, and jobbers, our findings illuminate how these players leverage modern electronic communication, video sharing apps, and barter trade in African used automotive part business. We further found local players employing unique practices to renovate, restructure, alter, restore, reuse, extend, and recycle these used parts, emphasizing maximum value extraction from minimal resources. This paper is one of the first academic works to highlight the criticality of local independent actors (non-dealerships) in the automotive aftermarket sector, especially in non-western contexts. It further showcases these local actors’ contributions to circular economy via revalorization, while at the same time creating social value for the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) consumers. Finally, the paper contributes to several literature streams including circular economy beyond formal systems, scalability of frugal and circular practices, and resource-constrained value creation, among others.

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the relationships between leadership, knowledge management capability (KMC) and process innovation during (and after) the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted a qualitative method with an interpretivist approach. The empirical data was collected via in-depth semi-structured interviews with 20 participants - 6 from Ghana and 14 from Nigeria. The data analysis followed Gioia's recommendations for qualitative rigour.FindingsThis study found that the capacity to manage knowledge and innovate are just as important to the success of organisations in turbulent times as are the qualities of its leaders. It further explores how middle managers may encourage knowledge sharing within an organisation and how an alignment between an organisation's internal resources and existing opportunities ties into innovative outcomes.Originality/valueThis paper highlights how the interplay between KMC, leadership and organisational culture (OC) can result in process innovation and how such a relationship can foster business performance in a crisis. This paper is a pioneering study focusing on the relationship between leadership effectiveness, OC, KMC and process innovation in Africa.

Purpose This study aims to examine the user experience of voice assistants (VAs) in different retailing contexts by highlighting factors that impact the effectiveness of voice commerce services. Design/methodology/approach This study follows a qualitative research method using 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews with online shoppers (15 users of VAs from Nigeria and 15 from the UK). Following Gioia’s methodology and automated content analysis using LexiPortal, this paper examined users’ motivations for adopting VAs, their challenges and how VAs might influence customers’ brand trust and loyalty. Findings This paper found that anthropomorphism, convenience, companionship and literacy support drove shoppers’ adoption of VAs. Technophobia, audio bias, audio disparity and data security emerged as challenges facing VA users. In addition, the Nigerian participants also highlighted unreliable power supply. Despite these challenges, the participants have developed trust and personal attachment to their VAs. Originality/value This study is one of the few academic works to specifically analyse how retail experiences are shaped through VAs in a comprative setting of British and Nigerian VA users. The findings enrich the extant literature on user experience of VAs with a granular focus on customer motivations as well as challenges.

PurposeThis paper is one of the first studies to examine specificities, including limits of mindfulness at work in an African organisational context, whilst dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It specifically addresses the role of organisational and managerial support systems in restoring employee wellbeing, social connectedness and attachment to their organisations, in order to overcome the exclusion caused by the ongoing pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a qualitative research methodology that includes interviews as the main data source. The sample comprises of 20 entrepreneurs (organisational leaders) from Ghana and Nigeria.FindingsThe authors found that COVID-19-induced worries restricted the practice of mindfulness, and this was prevalent at the peak of the pandemic, particularly due to very tough economic conditions caused by reduction in salaries, and intensified by pre-existing general economic and social insecurities, and institutional voids in Africa. This aspect further resulted in lack of engagement and lack of commitment, which affected overall team performance and restricted employees’ mindfulness at work. Hence, quietness by employees even though can be linked to mindfulness was linked to larger psychological stress that they were facing. The authors also found leaders/manager’s emotional intelligence, social skills and organisational support systems to be helpful in such circumstances. However, their effectiveness varied among the cases.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first studies to establish a link between the COVID-19 pandemic and mindfulness limitations. Moreover, it is a pioneering study specifically highlighting the damaging impact of COVID-19-induced concerns on leader–member exchange (LMX) and team–member exchange (TMX) relationships, particularly in the African context. It further brings in a unique discussion on the mitigating mechanisms of such COVID-19-induced concerns in organisations and highlights the roles of manager’s/leader’s emotional intelligence, social skills and supportive intervention patterns. Finally, the authors offer an in-depth assessment of the effectiveness of organisational interventions and supportive relational systems in restoring social connectedness following a social exclusion caused by COVID-19-induced worries.

This study highlights how constructs of importance to management in Africa - ambidextrous leadership and team learning - can extend or modify our existing management theories. Adopting an exploratory design with an interpretive philosophy, this study explores how supermarket store managers engage their subordinates in team learning sessions to enable their collective ambidexterity, facilitated by the presence of reflective conversations (RC) and ambidextrous human resource management (HRM) policies and practices. Based on our raw data, we develop a process-based model that shows how ambidextrous leadership behaviors can help develop team-level ambidexterity, including the supporting roles of RC and ambidextrous HRM practices in the process. This model thus seeks to motivate theoretically future ambidexterity research in Africa, as the theoretical ideas and themes in this study can be replicated and be broadly applied to future ambidexterity research on the continent. This model will, therefore, contribute to the theoretical development of African management literature and, accordingly, adds significant value to the mainstream ambidexterity literature.

This paper offers a conceptual overview of meta-organizations' role for environmental sustainability in the under-researched African context. The current paper is one of the few studies to offer a specific differentiation regarding the role and activities of meta-organizations for environmental sustainability in developed vs. emerging economies' settings. The paper further offers an in-depth assessment of meta-organizations' role for environmental sustainability in Africa, along with discussing major hurdles in this concern. Our analysis reveals several problems with business only meta-organizations in Africa, which significantly limit their role in ensuring environmental sustainability in this region. These problems include competing interests resulting in failure to accommodate multiple stakeholders, lack of responsible investing and environmental stewardship, along with institutional voids. Finally, the paper presents some potential solutions to overcome these problems.

This paper is one of the pioneering studies to specifically link COVID-19 pandemic with business failures in African B2B firms and the role of leadership and impression management in mitigating business failures. Based on the qualitative data from Ghana and Nigeria, our findings show that although B2B firms in emerging markets are agile and proactive, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the process of business decline leading to failure in some cases. Particularly, the lack of technological know-how and the absence of online business activities made it difficult for B2B firms to continue operations. Further, we found that case B2B African firms needed a balance of market and non-market strategies to avoid failure caused by the pandemic. Study findings also indicate that despite the challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic presented opportunities to B2B firms in emerging markets. Flexible working and employee management are found to be instrumental in avoiding business failure. Finally, our findings show that, despite the absence of institutional support in African emerging markets, several case B2B firms quickly adopted digital technologies to communicate with partners and manage online business operations.

Unlike previous social innovation (SI) research which has often taken a snapshot approach, we utilised four theoretical lenses— social innovation, institutional theory, stakeholder’s theory, and the behavioural theory of social entrepreneurship—to examine social innovation activities (particularly by MNCs) in Africa. Adopting a systematic literature review and a qualitative content analysis of 124 previous works, we found a high level of corruption, nepotism, a growing lack of transparency and accountability and an increasing lack of trust in African government as discouraging MNCs with good ideas from collaborating with government agencies to agree on a path for innovation. Secondly, we found numerous policy voids – many times often conflicting regulatory policies – and sometimes no regulatory guidelines – to regulate the SI activities of MNCs. Consequently, many MNCs exploit these institutional voids to evade delivering values to the African people, as we found the social amenities delivered by many MNCs to be low both in quality and quantity, forcing consumers to often engage in harmful consumption behaviours. Fourthly, the weak educational system in Africa imply that the continent may lack the capacity to develop the relevant talents and skills to drive the MNCs’ SI activities. Finally, we found the African thought system and management thinking in Africa – which are products of their collectivist culture – as barriers to MNCs’ capacity to deliver social values to the African people.

Purpose Even though sustainable entrepreneurship has increasingly received researchers’ attention in recent years, the topic remains rather under-researched in natural resources’ rich Gulf countries such as Oman. Hence, this paper aims to fill this gap in the literature and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is one of the first attempts to assess the state of sustainable entrepreneurship development in Oman from a multi-stakeholder perspective. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a qualitative research approach where in-depth semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 12 respondents representing relevant stakeholders of sustainable entrepreneurship development in Oman. The interviewees included four sustainable entrepreneurs, four policymakers and four educationists representing entrepreneurial skills development institutes in Oman. Findings This papers’ findings highlight that despite some positive improvements, several critical challenges remain, which hinder sustainable entrepreneurship development. The authors further found the role of FinTech to be critical in this concern by all stakeholders, though its usage and acceptance remain low. Also, the costs associated with the post-carbon (sustainable) economy and different profitability evolution have resulted in a slow change in the policy development in this concern. From an educational (skills development) perspective, a lack of context-specific training programmes and culture-based hesitations appeared to be hindering achieving sustainable entrepreneurship possibilities in Oman. The nascent entrepreneurial ecosystem, bureaucracy and lack of human capital (attraction as well as retention) appeared to be significant challenges for entrepreneurs. Finally, the findings highlighted the need for cross-sector collaboration with clear benchmarks for effective policy development concerning sustainable entrepreneurship in Oman. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first academic study explicitly highlighting the state of sustainable entrepreneurship in Oman by incorporating the development initiatives as well as the major challenges in the analysis. Secondly, this study is also a pioneering work specifying the interlinkage between financing (FinTech), policy initiatives and skills development and the development of a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem in an under-researched context of Oman. Finally, the transition to a sustainable economy is challenging in natural resources’ dependent economies like Oman, as it needs to be supported by the mindset change in the larger society (legitimacy). In this concern, this paper, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is one of the first academic endeavours to also specify the role of legitimacy from the perspective of different stakeholders (and larger society) for sustainable entrepreneurship development in such contexts.

The current article is one of the rare studies to specifically focus on the contextual conditions under which the learning-related actions of transformational supervisors' help retailing supermarkets' store managers to learn and engage in behaviors that produce creative outcomes. We use a qualitative research approach with the data based on in-depth semi structured interviews with 40 retailing supermarkets' store managers in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK. Our findings show that transformational supervision significantly boosts store managers' creativity, facilitated by fostering store managers' learning orientation, creative role identity (CRI) and creative self-efficacy (CSE), in all three contexts. From our findings, we have developed a model that symbolize the role of transformational supervisors in fostering store managers' creativity, which provides a baseline for supermarkets in (re)evaluating the significance of their leadership styles on follower creativity.

Purpose The current paper aims to analyse the antecedents of leader–member exchange relationships (LMX) by specifically focusing on the influence of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic. Design/methodology/approach This study uses qualitative research methods with primary interviews as the main data source. Primary interviews with 40 managers from top supermarkets in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK were undertaken. Findings The authors found that both high-quality positive feedback and constructive criticisms produced the same feelings – more positive interpersonal relationships with their supervisors, higher levels of commitment to their organisations, higher job satisfaction and thus, high-quality LMX relationships. Where criticisms were delivered without greater interpersonal treatment, feedback was perceived as negative, and participants revealed lack of job satisfaction, lack of commitment to their organisations, poor interpersonal relationship with their supervisors, high turnover intent and thus low-quality LMX relationship. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current paper is one of the first studies to highlight the consequences of different feedback delivery tactics on subsequent LMX quality particularly in African context. The authors specifically develop a process-based model of enhancing high-quality LMX, which shows the role of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic in the process. The authors also develop a process-based model that illustrates how negative/unconstructive feedback could result in a low-quality LMX. Finally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is also one of the first to offer a comparative assessment between African and British (the UK) empirical settings and highlight some interesting dynamics concerning LMX quality and role of supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic.

Due to ongoing debates on evidence-based management (EBMgt) in healthcare, there is an increasing research interest in the relationship between leadership support and operational excellence in the health care sector.The purpose of this study is to critically evaluate the ethical leadership behaviour of the general practitioners (GPs) and their practice manager (PM) in a health centre in the United Kingdom (UK).We adopted a mixed method and used five theoretical lenses -manipulation, putting self above others, responsibility avoidance, lack of flexibility, and belittling others -to examine these medical leaders' ethical behaviour and to match their ethical behaviours with their employees' expectations.Although there is strong evidence of ethical behaviour, which reflects the National Health Service (NHS) core values, there are strong evidence of unethical behaviours too.We therefore analysed the impact of these leaders' (un)ethical practices on their employees' motivation.The findings from this study could be used to improve ethical decision making, leadership support, and leadership development in healthcare.The paper's findings also contribute to the application of EBMgt in healthcare sector.

This paper offers a conceptual assessment of some constraints associated with development of dynamic capabilities, for achieving a competitive advantage by African firms in international context.The paper advances the extant international entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities literature by specifically highlighting the role of financial, managerial, institutional, and spiritual factors in relation to the development of capabilities needed for success in international markets.Several strategies including human resource management and human capital development practices which can potentially strengthen the dynamic capabilities linked to international entrepreneurial competitiveness of African firms are also suggested based on the conceptual discussion.

Supported by an extensive review of four-domains of literature (knowledge management, organizational learning, culture, and retail), this study examines the influence of national culture on transfer of knowledge categories in top supermarkets in Africa and the United Kingdom (UK). Data from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 40 store managers (SMs) were used to examine how the SMs transfer the five sales performance drivers - selling-related knowledge, the degree-of-adaptiveness, role-clarity, cognitive-aptitude, and work-engagement - to their subordinates. The study finds these UK supermarkets' knowledge transfer (KT) practices as embedded in problem-based learning (PBL) and project-based learning. SMs from African supermarkets exploit various opportunities to build interpersonal relationships and trust with knowledge-holders, thereby facilitating learning and KT. This study links such behaviors to "Ubuntu" - a well-established African philosophy/ethic. The study finds socialization, externalization, and internalization as common knowledge assets in African supermarkets, in contrast to socialization and externalization in their UK counterparts. This study found that, despite these variations in their strategic priorities regarding knowledge assets, these five sales performance drivers are transferred successfully in supermarkets in both continents that participated in the research. This offers a new insight that challenges the extant theorizing that KT praxis varies among diverse cultures.