The inaugural Academy of Management Africa Conference was held from the 7 to 10th January 2013, at the Gordon Institute of Business Science, a campus of the University of Pretoria, in Johannesburg. This was the first time that the Academy of Management had been held in Africa. The 2013 conference was focused around four themes.
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Track 1: Navigating Institutions: Business, Government, and Civil Society
Title: Building a Nation: Cross-Sector Innovation and Constraints
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Track 2: Emerging Market Firms and MNCs: Characteristics and Global Aspirations
Title: From Natural to Created Assets: Emerging Multinational Companies in South Africa
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Track 3: The Base of the Pyramid: Emerging Market Consumers, Workers, and Managers
Title: New Markets New Mindsets: Formal and Informal Business Channels at the Base of the Pyramid
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Track 4: Cultural Diversity and Transformational Societies
Title: A Country that No Longer Exists: Leading Institutions through the Wounds of History
Around 450 participants from universities around the world came together to present academic papers, and engage in seminars, workshops and research conversations. Each participant also had the opportunity to spend one and a half days directly experiencing the contexts and environments of local South African businesses and organisations around areas of their research interests. These learning journeys involved participants going out into the community to gain first hand a better understanding of the challenges facing entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial scholars in Africa. Plenty of time was built into the program for informal discussion and the combination proved to be a very productive learning experience.
Carol Dalglish and Judy Matthews from ACE presented a paper, titled: ‘Micro-credit is necessary but not sufficient for ensuring the success of micro-enterprises at the bottom of the pyramid’, in the special interest group: The Base of the Pyramid: Emerging Market Consumers, Workers, and Managers. This research examined the factors affecting the successful provision of micro-credit to people at the bottom of the pyramid and discussed the activities required to support entrepreneurial activities in a peri-urban African setting. The findings enable us to better understand why micro-credit, though useful, is only part of the solution, in a setting characterized by extreme resource constraints with an institutional fabric lacking the infrastructure that assists market development. Further information about this paper will be presented in a future ACE Research Vignette.
Many thanks to both Carol Dalglish and Judy Matthews for contributing this story.