A postcolonial and anti-colonial reading of ‘African’ leadership and management in organisation studies : tensions, contradictions and possibilities

Abstract

This article reports on a postcolonial and anti-colonial reading of representations of ‘African’ leadership and management in organization studies. The resulting analysis revealed tensions and contradictions between stereotypical colonial images of ‘African’ leadership and management and proposed counter-images that often reflect the excesses of cultural relativism. Finding alternatives between colonized representations and counter-representations is not an easy project. This article extends existing postcolonial scholarship in organization studies which has relied primarily upon the seminal trinity of Said, Spivak, and Bhabha by incorporating anti-colonial and nationalist thought found primarily in the work of Fanon, Césaire and Senghor.