Special Collection published in the South African Journal of Business Management (SAJBM)
We are delighted to announce the publication of the latest Special Collection titled ‘Women in Business in Africa’ in the South African Journal of Business Management (SAJBM).
Background to the special collection:
The South African Journal of Business Management (SAJBM) has been disseminating research that has real significance for management and leadership theory and practice. The focus of the journal falls into two categories within the business environment, namely managerial and leadership theory and management and leadership practice.
A review of the articles published in the SAJBM specifically relating to women as employees, managers, leaders, and entrepreneurs revealed that 16 articles were published over more than 50 years.
These contributions predominantly focused on South African women and workplaces, and there is still a dearth of research on the lived experiences of women at work on the rest of the African continent. The limited count and the diffuse topics relating to women at work and in business in the SAJBM and in scholarly research on women at work in Africa, signalled a need for a special collection focusing on women in business in Africa.
The aim of this collection is to extend knowledge on how, in the formal economy, the entry of large numbers of women into paid work, business management, leadership, business ownership, and female entrepreneurship in Africa has been marked by changes in legislation, economic, and behavioural and relational patterns, as well as mind-shift changes regarding gender stereotypes, gendered work, and workplaces.
In this special collection, four articles moved beyond theorising about barriers and limitations that women experience, and, instead, explored the agency and resilience that women hold, develop, and employ when navigating spaces that were previously predominantly occupied by men.
This special collection opens with a continental focus in Emmanuel Orkoh and Wilma Viviers’s contribution, Gender composition of the ownership and management of firms and the gender digital divide in Africa.
In the second contribution, titled Entrepreneurial ecosystems created by woman entrepreneurs in Botswana, Anastacia Mamabolo and Lekoko Reitumetse explore how 11 successful woman entrepreneurs in Botswana created their own entrepreneurial ecosystems to support their business ventures.
The third contribution highlights adaptive strategies women employ to navigate harsh physical and perceived threatening interpersonal contexts in a highly gendered work environment — an underground mine with the article We are surviving well’: Adaptive strategies women apply in an underground South African mine, by Salome Jansen van Vuuren, Marius Stander, and Vera Roos.
In closing, Nasima Carrim’s paper Sandwiched between groups: Upward career experiences of South African Indian women, explains how shifting identities are performed by women within two generations, depending on their differing relational frameworks and socio-historical position during apartheid and in the transition towards democracy.
PODCAST: The Editor-in-Chief of SAJBM, Professor Mias de Klerk is joined by the associate editors Professor Anita Bosch and Professor Lize Booysen as they give us an overview of the special collection. Listen here…https://bit.ly/3qq8vYX
The special collection features on the journal website, www.sajbm.org and, the editorial that sets the scene for more deliberate gender-orientated business management research (Women in Business in Africa: (Re)claiming our agency) is also available for download.
Guest editors:
- Prof Anita Bosch, Research Chair: Women at work, University of Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa.
- Prof Lize Booysen, Graduate School of Leadership and Change, Antioch University, USA; Adjunct Faculty, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, NC, USA; Professor Extraordinaire, University of Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa.