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Transforming Organizations in the Digital Era: Dignity, Justice, and Prosperity in Africa

Globalization and digitalization are having a transformative effect on the nature and organization of work as organizations strive to adapt to the competitive pressures unleased by these twin environmental forces. For many organizations, adapting to these pressures has entailed the adoption of new business models as they strategize to explore and exploit the threats and opportunities in the increasingly changed environment. Additionally, digitilization has engendered new forms of work organization and altered long standing employment conditions.

In tandem with these adaptive organizational responses are shifting societal values. For example, the previous prioritization of achievement of organizational goals at the expense of the well-being of individual employees is increasingly being replaced to one that focuses on the sustainable management of employees. These environmental forces particularly digitilization has enabled organizations to enhance operational processes, develop innovative products and services, provide high quality jobs for segments of the workforce, and individualization of employment conditions. 

Yet, these benefits are counterbalanced by the emergence of a growing number of employees who find themselves in precarious jobs, have limited opportunities for skill development, deteriorating working conditions, and increasingly constitute the working poor.

The theme of this conference “Transforming Organizations in the Digital Era: Dignity, Justice, and Prosperity in Africa” is intended to provide a forum for a robust exchange of ideas and sharing of research findings to illuminate our understanding of how organizations in Africa are adapting to the preceding transformative forces of globalization and digitilization. Additionally, the conference aims to understand how the nature and contexts of work can be redesigned to foster sustainable management of employees to promote workplace dignity, justice, and prosperity for employees and their communities.

We therefore encourage submission of empirical and conceptual papers that speak to the theme of the conference and explore answers to such questions as:

• How do African organizations conceptualize their environments and the competitive forces that define these environments?
• What strategies are adopted by African organizations to respond to these competitive forces and what are the drivers of these strategies? 
• What interorganizational alliances are being forged by African organizations to promote the development of innovative products and services? 
• What are the forms of digitalization adopted by African organizations and how are they changing the nature of work organizations?
• Have African organizations embraced corporate entrepreneurship and what are the successful factors?
• What are private-public sector strategies to enhance the competitiveness of African organizations?
• What roles are governments playing in the regulation of employment conditions to minimize the tendency of organizations to reproduce inequalities through their employment practices?
• What new forms of work organizations (e.g cooperatives) have been formed to promote productive activities in rural communities? How are they operated and what are drivers of their effectiveness? 
• What role do labor organizations play in protecting the rights of employees as well as their sustainable management?
• What employment practices and work contexts have emerged in African organizations to promote dignity and justice for employees? 
• What are the drivers and forms of digitilization in the public sector and how are they impacting on operational effectiveness?

Conference Proceedings:

Proceedings Editor: Dorothy Mpabanga, University of Botswana, Botswana (dorothym366@gmail.com)

Abridged versions of accepted papers may be selected for publication in the Best Paper Proceedings of the Conference. There will be a best paper award for each track. Winners will receive a certificate and the paper will be highlighted in the conference program. Best papers will also be considered for publication in the Africa Journal of Management (AJOM) subject to the journal’s blind review process.

Please check the AJOM website at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rajm20/current

About The Host Institution:
Established in 1964, Stellenbosch Business School was the first business school from an African university to receive the prestigious Triple Crown of international accreditations, reserved for the top 1% of business schools worldwide. The school focuses on post-graduate education with programmes including PG-Dip, specialist masters, MBA, and PhD. Short courses are provided by an executive development arm of the school. Many programmes include a responsible leadership dimension as part of the school’s commitment to developing responsible leaders for a better world -- a key differentiator of the school’s programmes, research, and social impact activities. There are six research Centres at the school with expertise in Development Finance, Governance, Women and Work, Futures & Foresight, Conflict & Collaboration, and Responsible Leadership. The school also has strong pedigree in entrepreneurship hosting the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for South Africa and its own Small Business Academy for entrepreneurs in informal settlements across three provinces of the country. Stellenbosch Business School is a member of PRME and a number of alliances of leading business schools including the Council on Business & Society, the EMBA Consortium, and the Global Innovation Challenge.

Please follow these guidelines and formatting instructions to prepare your paper:

• Each paper can only be submitted to ONE track. If a proposed idea does not seem to fit any of the tracks described above, authors should contact the Program Co-Chairs: Samuel Aryee, University of Surrey (s.aryee@surrey.ac.uk) and Sherwat Elwan Ibrahim, American University in Cairo (email: sherwat@aucegypt.edu). Your submission will be directed to the most appropriate track. 
• All papers and proposals should be submitted electronically via the conference website at www.africaacademyofmanagement.org
• Submitted papers must NOT have been previously published and if under review, must NOT appear in print before the AFAM 2024 Conference.
• Paper submissions will be blind reviewed. Authors should therefore remove all author-identifying information, including acknowledgements from the text, and document properties.
• The paper (title page, abstract, main text, figures, tables, references, etc) must be in one document created in a PDF format.
• The maximum length of a paper must be 40 pages (including tables, appendices and references). The paper format should follow the Africa Journal of Management’s style guide)
• No changes in the paper title, abstract, authorship, and actual paper can occur after the submission deadline
• Once a submission is accepted, all panelists in a PDW/Caucus/Symposia, and at least one author of a co-authored paper must register for the conference. Otherwise their submissions will not be included in the Conference Program or Proceedings.   
• Those submitting work to the conference are expected to serve as reviewers. They are to register both as author and reviewer on the conference website.
• The submission portal opens on February 15, 2023 and closes at midnight May 30, 2023. NOTE: SUBMISSION EXTENDED SECOND TIME TO JUNE 30, 2023

AFAM Conference Guidelines for Presentations

Full papers have been allocated 90 minute sessions and presenters should share the time and leave room for discussion. It is intended that presenters and the chair/discussant for each session will have read each other's papers in advance and should arrange to send the papers to each other.

Full paper presentations will be made using a laptop and data projector. You will be asked to bring your presentation to the event on a memory stick, for use on the day, along with sufficient copies of a slide handout for your audience.

The structure of the Professional Development Workshop (PDW) sessions will be as agreed upon by the Track and Conference Chairs for 90mins. PDW sessions are designed to be interactive. It is advisable that all PDW sessions should stick to the times allocated so that they do not run into scheduled sessions.  

Presenters can also submit Symposium Proposals. A symposium proposal should include an overview of the session and a summary of the presentations for each presenter. The proposal can also include a discussant. Symposium sessions will be 90 minutes.

Poster presenters can begin setting up 30 minutes before the start of their scheduled posters session.  Staff members will be available during set-up to provide authors with materials for mounting data and illustrations. All posters must remain on display for the duration of the poster session.

Posters must be attended by the author/s for the first 40mins of the poster session, at minimum.
 Once your poster session concludes you can begin to remove your poster. Tear-down must be completed no later than 30 minutes after the poster session has ended. Posters left up after the tear-down period will be removed for disposal. AFAM is not responsible for any lost or damaged posters.

You must provide an abstract of your paper and illustrations in a size and format suitable for poster display. It is also suggested that you prepare brief statements of the purpose of your work, your experimental methodology and design, and the major results of your findings and their implications.



Abstracts and illustrations must be readable from distances of 3 ft. or more. Text should be printed from a laser printer, in a font size large enough to read from that distance. Keep illustrations simple. Limited use of color, however, can add emphasis. Any photograph should be a minimum of 8 in. x 10 in. Minimum size for all other illustrations is 9 in. x 12 in. 

The rooms allocated for Full Papers and Professional Development Workshops Presentations will have a laptop, data projector and screen available. Please note: delegates will need to bring their presentation on a USB data stick and arrive early to upload their presentation onto the laptop. This is to ensure presentations are uploaded successfully and to allow enough time for any technical difficulties that may arise. Delegates can also bring any materials they wish to distribute to other delegates during their presentation. AFAM suggests bringing 20 copies for distribution. 

Please see below the session timings allocated for every delegate’s presentation

Please see below the session timings allocated for every delegate’s presentation.

Technical Information

All rooms, which have a laptop, data projector and screen available, will be installed with following packages from Microsoft Office: Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Delegates therefore must ensure the file type of the presentation is fully compatible with Microsoft Office.

Laptop and Printing Facilities

Please note: those that want to use Apple Macs and iPads will need to have their connecting cables as these would not be supplied by the conference. Further you will have to bring your own electrical adapters given that the voltage in Botswana is different. They will not be free printing, delegates will have to pay for printing.

Internet Access

There will be complementary computers set up at media centre for internet access. Please be cautious of others and limit your time to 10mins or less to check your emails. Wi‐Fi available for purchase at the computer lab for $10 a day. Please ask registration for information if you would like to pursue this option.

Dear Reviewer,

The Reviewer System is now open and accepting reviewers for the 7th Biennial Conference of the Africa Academy of Management.
 
As such, we would like to make sure that you have asked your colleagues to register in the reviewer system.  And as the quality of the program is based on reviews, we encourage you to ask your track reviewers to examine the following guidelines:

• Please be constructive in your comments to the author/s by identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses in the manuscript, and providing constructive ideas for improvement and meeting the limitations you pointed out in your review. Areas to cover in your review include the theoretical development and the technical correctness of the methodology, and the overall value-added contribution and implications the submission provides to the discipline and the community.

• Please try to judge manuscripts based on how well they stimulate thinking and discussion, and be open to diverse theoretical and methodological orientations.

• As a reviewer, you will be required to complete your assigned reviews between February 15, 2023 and July 15, 2023, so please plan your time accordingly.

Please feel free to contact us should you need any further help.

Reviewer Resources

Registration Fees:

NOTE: Make sure to enter guest(s) name and email address in the comment box on the next page. Contact us if you have more than three guests.

• Travel Information
• Visa Letter

Second Draft of the AFAM 2024 Conference Program

Many thanks to colleagues who flagged omissions and inaccuracies in the first draft of the program. Although we did our level best to rectify them, we may have inadvertently left some unaddressed. We therefore encourage you to take a close look at the second draft and let us know of any such omissions and inaccuracies at your earliest convenience.

We aim to post a finalized version of the program by mid-December. Papers whose authors have not registered by then would be excluded from the program. For multi-authored papers, at least one of the authors must register to have their papers included in the program.

Again, many thanks to the authors, reviewers, track chairs, and members of the conference organizing team for their contributions to putting the program together.

We look forward to seeing you in Cape Town and to your participation in what promises to be a stimulating conference.

Sam Aryee
Sherwat Ibrahim

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CONFERENCE PROGRAM