Akan Management Styles and Gold Trade in Ancient Ghana

Abstract

This chapter seeks to explore what responsible management entailed in the country of Ghana, with regard to gold trade. Responsible management ‘… addresses the specific strategies, tactics or actions managers ought to pursue to address business’s accountability, obligations and duties to society and stakeholders’ (Carroll et al., 2019, p. 57). The Akan moral saying, ‘To possess virtue is better than gold’, purports that good ethics is of more value compared to wealth; and underpins Afro-communitarianism where common societal good is priced over individual gains. ‘The gold mining sector was largely administered by the Abusa system, which is still a feature in agriculture in modern Ghana’ (Iliffe, 1995, p. 147). This system operated a tripartite profit-sharing scheme, where the chief who is the landholder, received one-third of the production, the lessee or operator of the mine one-third and the workers the last third (Iliffe, 1995, p.147). Some traditional values and ethical concepts that guided doing business in ancient Ghana will be expounded in this chapter.

Citation

Chachu, E. (2022), "Akan Management Styles and Gold Trade in Ancient Ghana", Ogunyemi, K., Ogunyemi, O. and Anozie, A. (Ed.) Responsible Management in Africa, Volume 1: Traditions of Principled Entrepreneurship, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 43-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80262-437-320221006