Introduction: New Directions in the Management of Human Resources in Africa

Abstract

The first named author edited a special issue on human resource management (HRM) in Africa in the International Journal of Human Resource Management a decade ago (Kamoche, 2002). At that time, it was fairly common to begin journal articles and doctoral literature reviews affirming that the literature on HRM and management in general in Africa was ‘scarce/scanty/sketchy’, and for authors to proceed as if they were in typically uncharted domain. We believe this affirmation to be largely untenable today. In proportion, of course, the amount of knowledge on the African management and organizational context, in high-impact publications, pales when compared with the West and Asia. The situation has changed considerably in the last decade or so, and the number of publications focused on African management, organizational and entrepreneurial issues grows every year. The relevant literature includes several books as well as articles in high-impact journals that characterize the diversity of HRM theory and practice, and how culture might be understood in highly complex societies (e.g. Jackson, 2004; Kamoche et al., 2004).