ABSTRACT

What happens when Covid-19 meets Africa? To find answers, this article examines tertiary management education delivered by the continent’s business schools in the context of Africa’s susceptibilities to the pandemic. The concept of proximity is applied as an axiomatic analytic complement to Covid’s transmission pathways impacting on the psychosocial foundation of human relations, people’s spatial distribution and their time perspectives. Taking management literature into account, proximity is applied to Africa’s business schools in terms of their immediate and long-term responses to the pandemic, suggesting practical post-Covid reforms considered from a humanistic management approach to management education and scholarship. A theme throughout this article is that Covid-19’s exposure of contextual vulnerabilities presents an opportunity and imperative for business schools’ re-missioning and renewal to enhance relevance, quality and building post-Covid resilience. The article provides a framework for the study of other Covid-sensitive sectors or organizations and theory development and testing using different proximity conceptualizations, frames and combinations thereof. Limitations of the study are discussed.

摘要

当Covid-19与非洲相遇时会发生什么？为了找到答案，本文考察了非洲对流行病的敏感性背景下，非洲大陆商学院提供的第三级管理教育。接近性概念是对Covid传播途径的公理分析补充，影响了人际关系，人们的空间分布及其时间观点的社会心理基础。考虑到管理文献，就对非洲大流行病的立即和长期反应而言，将其应用于非洲商学院，这表明从人文主义管理方法到管理教育和奖学金，考虑到了科维德后实用的改革。贯穿本文的主题是Covid-19对上下文漏洞的暴露为商学院重新派遣和更新以增强相关性，质量和建立Covid后的应变能力提供了机会和必要性。本文提供了一个框架，用于研究其他对Covid敏感的部门或组织，以及使用不同的接近度概念，框架及其组合进行理论开发和测试。讨论了研究的局限性。