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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue which considers some of the contemporary debates in managing people in Africa.

The papers that constitute this special issue were selected from submissions to various events hosted by the Africa Research Group, a community of scholars committed to researching Africa, and from a more general call for submissions.

The papers highlight the changing picture of the African organisational landscape and provide both theoretical and empirical insights about the opportunities and challenges of managing people in a culturally complex continent.

Taken together, the papers make an important contribution by engaging current debates and demonstrating potential new areas for further research.

This paper aims to examine the important factors that influence foreign retailers' expansion in China. By doing so the paper proposes business strategies for foreign retailers to be successful in China and other emerging economies.

A case study approach is employed to build theory. Five case studies were chosen, including the world's four largest retail firms: Wal‐Mart, Carrefour, Metro and Tesco, as well as the Japanese department store Heivado.

The paper identifies six important activities in successful retail expansion: adaptation to the external environment; responses to psychic distance; establishment of business networking; localization; entry strategies into new areas; and the role of local management team. A new framework articulates the interdependent relationships between various factors embedded in retail internationalization, including external environment, internal drivers, psychic distance, and expansion strategies.

The findings provide directions to managers of international retail firms on how to expand successfully in an emerging market.

This paper offers an exploratory framework on post‐entry expansion, which provides an indispensable link between previous research on pre‐entry and entry stages of retailer expansion and future research on foreign retailers' performance.

The subject of leadership in Africa is an increasingly pertinent one that has been approached from various stand-points. Mainstream theoretical perspectives have shaped contemporary learning interventions on the continent, but are increasingly challenged by African renaissance views that critique this approach as a form of western ideological hegemony and an extension of the colonial project. However, alongside this debate, the issue of how to effectively address the issue of leadership “under-development” in African organisations remains salient. Moving beyond renaissance criticisms of western hegemonic thought formations, the purpose of this paper is to broaden the discourse by exploring several relevant options for a more pragmatic approach to leadership capacity building in contemporary African organisations.

This is a conceptual paper that takes a critical look at the existing debate on leadership development in Africa. In this, it examines two separate existing knowledge frameworks and considers the implications of each of these for praxis in context. The analysis presented here focuses on means of navigating between these thought formations in a much more circumspect and critical manner that leaders can learn from.

This paper highlights the important relationship between context, mainstream theory and indigenous knowledge. Its critical analyses suggest that engaging carefully with indigeneity in an experimental hybrid space may enable creative adaptation and appropriation through contextualisation, leading to more reflexive organisational practice. It subsequently proposes a conceptual model for constructive engagement with leadership development in practice.

The paper makes an important conceptual contribution to the debate by moving a step beyond the important theoretical criticisms and counter-criticisms that have so far shaped the discourse and more crucially, focusing on the salient practical question of “where we go from here” with respect to leadership capacity building in African organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to answer specific research questions by investigating two case studies which involve large global mining multinational enterprises (MNEs) and how they implement sustainable development programs across rural communities in Tanzania. The author specifically examines how MNEs use internal stakeholders that is employees, as intermediaries, to influence external stakeholders, the local communities, to address social problems.

The author uses an exploratory research method which involves MNEs and 18 communities in western Tanzania as the cases. Semi-structured interviews, observation and the use of relevant archival documents was used to collect data.

This study suggests that, if MNEs are to leverage sustainability initiatives in rural communities, they must consider implementing a locally oriented strategy in their overall business activities that incorporates meaningful engagement initiatives with their employees and with the communities.

Despite the study was limited to one country, the results point to the importance of incorporating the role of community institutional environments’ influence over MNEs sustainability activities which could be generalized to other developing countries such as the case study of Tanzania.

This paper contributes to the nascent but growing literature on the role of business in the community, how employees as intermediaries facilitate effective CSR in communities, and the overall impact of community institutional environment on businesses. The author provides some practical policy implications related to MNE-community relationships in developing countries.

The characteristics of a particular organizational culture may affect performance in achieving the objectives of international joint ventures (IJVs), a type of partnership that is often used in international business relations between developed and emerging countries. The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the underlying dimensions that characterize organizational culture in these countries may affect firms’ performance, specifically their competitiveness, effectiveness and efficiency.

The survey conducted for this study was addressed to Spanish-Moroccan IJVs trading in Morocco. The research hypotheses were tested using multivariate analysis techniques (exploratory factor analysis and linear regression model).

Based on information provided by the CEOs of Spanish-Moroccan IJVs between small- to medium-sized firms, the present study shows that levels of competitiveness, effectiveness and/or efficiency in these organizations are influenced by the involvement of staff in management, the degree of centralization of decision taking and the firms’ emphasis on results or on procedures.

This research contributes to the knowledge of the main factors related to the organizational culture of joint ventures that influence competitiveness, effectiveness and efficiency achieved.

The value provided by this research lies in the sample examined, in its focus on a very common type of partnership between SMEs, which has been little studied previously, and in the fact that the results obtained are extensible to other realities, such as partnerships between European companies and those from countries with similar characteristics (located in Africa or in countries where an Arab culture prevails).

Contemporary careers research suggests that individuals are more likely to be proactive about their careers when they possess an internal, rather than an external locus of control (LOC). The purpose of this paper is to adopt the view that individuals can be both external and proactive depending on whether or not they possess an incremental implicit theory.

Self-administered surveys were completed by 127 employed individuals in Nigeria. These surveys were used to gather information on individuals’ external LOC, protean and boundaryless career orientations and implicit theory beliefs.

Results indicated partial support for positive relationships between external LOC and contemporary career orientations and that an incremental implicit theory can have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between an external LOC belief in chance and the values-driven protean career orientation.

The study was based on a cross-sectional study in one time period and all information was self-report.

The results suggest that HR managers that operate in global environments should consider the importance of individual implicit theory and on career orientations and take a broader view of the role of internal and external LOC.

The study questions whether predominant perspectives of the relationship between proactive career orientations and internal LOC applies to contexts where external LOC predominate.

This study is unique in the examination of positive relationships between implicit theory, external LOC and contemporary career orientations. Furthermore, the study examines these relationships in an unstable and unpredictable work environment context, Nigeria, where such positive relationships are highly necessary to improve the career self-management of individuals.