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Special issue of /Business & Society/**//*
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*Business, society and the environment in Africa*
Deadline for submissions: December 1, 2013
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/Guest editors/
Ans Kolk, University of Amsterdam Business School, The Netherlands
Miguel Rivera-Santos, EMLYON Business School, France / Babson College, US
*Call for papers*
This special issue of Business and Society aims to contribute to the
development of theoretical and empirical insights on the role of
business in African countries, in the context of the important
environmental, social and governance challenges faced by the Continent.
The need for knowledge to help further sustainable development, in an
equitable and accountable way, makes a better understanding of business
in Africa particularly urgent, especially considering the relative lack
of research published on these themes in management and organization
journals. To address the specific situation in African countries,
existing theories and frameworks may need to be extended, adjusted or
replaced by approaches that could have implications beyond the
continent. Conversely, current paradigms may be directly applicable to
the African context as such, but data limitations may require
methodological adaptations.
While environmental and social issues exist across the globe, leading to
a thriving literature on a range of topics, Africa seems to accumulate
both major environmental problems and social problems. Environmental
problems include, among others, the effects of global warming and
climate variability, pollution, the loss of biodiversity, deforestation
and desertification, which affect the availability of land and food.
Compounding environmental issues, social problems are also prevalent
throughout the African continent. The World Bank's ranked 26 African
countries among the 30 poorest countries in the world in GDP (PPP) in
2009 and the UN's Economic Commission for Africa shows at best mixed
results in the progress towards achieving the Millennium Development
Goals by 2015, sharply contrasting with other continents, such as Asia
or Latin America. Poverty, human rights violations, health problems and
lack of social security are coupled with often weak governance,
corruption and conflict. While the number of wars across the continent
has decreased since the 1990s, some countries still face conflict or
continue to show worrying signs of political instability. At the same
time, African countries exhibit strong and resilient economic growth in
spite of the global economic crisis, with a continent-wide forecasted
growth of 5.3% for 2011, according to the International Monetary Fund,
and huge potential and promising economic developments have been noted.
Yet, in spite of the scale and importance of the environmental and
social issues in Africa, and in spite of the sustained economic growth
that the continent has experienced for a decade, very few published
papers in mainstream management journals use African data. A literature
search for published papers on Africa in leading management journals
yielded a total of twenty-seven published papers, of which only seven
were published in the last decade. Among African countries, South Africa
in particular, and to a lesser extent Nigeria, receives attention. This
same pattern is found for more specific outlets on corporate social
responsibility, sustainability and business ethics, in which South
Africa is also a main focus, followed by Nigeria (Kolk & Lenfant, 2010;
Visser, 2006). In international business and management, overview
articles on the "state of the art" in corporate (social) responsibility
and sustainable development showed a serious lack of attention for
Africa as well (Egri & Ralston, 2008; Kolk & Van Tulder, 2010). Egri and
Ralston (2008, p. 325) noted that "it is particularly troubling that
there has been relatively little on-the-ground corporate responsibility
research in countries where the need for corporate responsibility is
most pressing due to greater poverty, environmental degradation, and
institutional governance issues". Remarkably, even in research on the
base/bottom of the pyramid most of the cases and examples stem from
India and other emerging economies, leaving the African relatively
understudied, as shown in a recent article on a decade of BOP article
(Kolk, Rivera-Santos, & Rufín, forthcoming).
We believe that this dearth of studies uncovers two distinct issues.
First, while emerging countries such as China or India have recently
become relatively common empirical settings in management studies,
Africa may simply not always be on the radar as a place to conduct
research. Second, conducting research in Africa creates specific
challenges, which stem directly from the social, environmental and
governance problems mentioned above, coupled with complexities related
to linguistic, security, cultural and/or political issues. This
particularly affects the possibility to collect empirical data in the
absence of large-scale databases. While scholars start to better
recognize the implications of conducting research in nontraditional
contexts (Kriauciunas et al., 2011), the challenges associated with data
collection in contexts characterized by high levels of poverty, conflict
and poor governance may seem daunting to many researchers.
With a goal of putting Africa on the scholarly map, this special issue
aims to publish papers on business, society and environment in the
African context. We welcome//innovative papers, both conceptual and
empirical, both qualitative and quantitative, with a focus on or data
from the African continent. The possible topic list covers the whole
range of environmental, social and governance issues mentioned above.
The special issue is open to papers from different theoretical
backgrounds and academic disciplines as long as it relates to the
business and society domain in line with the overall focus of the journal.**
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*Submission guidelines*
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All paper submissions should conform to /Business & Society/'s standard
guidelines for authors, details of which can be found at the B&S
website: http://bas.sagepub.com <http://bas.sagepub.com>
Questions about the special issue can be directed at the guest editors
via e-mail:
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>(Ans Kolk) or [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> (Miguel Rivera-Santos)
Deadline: Manuscripts must be received by 1 December 2013, and should be
sent to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>.
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*References*
Egri, C. P., & Ralston, D. A. (2008). Corporate responsibility: A review
of international management research from 1998 to 2007. /Journal of
International Management, 14/, 319-339.
Kolk, A., & Lenfant, F. (2010). MNC reporting on CSR and conflict in
Central Africa. /Journal of Business Ethics, 93/, 241-255.
Kolk, A., Rivera-Santos, M., & C. Rufín (Forthcoming). Reviewing a
decade of research on the "Base/Bottom of the Pyramid" concept.
/Business & Society/.
Kolk, A., & Van Tulder, R. (2010). International business, corporate
social responsibility and sustainable development. /International
Business Review, 19/(2), 119-125.
Kriauciunas, A., Parmigiani, A., & Rivera-Santos, M. (2011). Leaving our
comfort zone: Integrating established practices with unique adaptations
to conduct survey-based strategy research in non-traditional contexts.
/Strategic Management Journal/, /32/, 994-1010.
Visser, W. (2006). Research on corporate citizenship in Africa: A
ten-year review (1995-2005). In W. Visser, M. McIntosh and C. Middleton
(Eds.), /Corporate citizenship in Africa: Lessons from the past; paths
to the future/. Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing.
