Book Review of African Virtue Ethics Traditions for Business and Management Edited by Kemi Ogunyemi

Excerpt

African Virtue Ethics Traditions for Business and Management is a ten-chapter volume edited by Kemi Ogunyemi. These chapters describe traditional African ethics as systems of virtue ethics that must be renewed to address corruption and despotism in the wake of the colonial era. The contributing authors make their arguments using historical accounts, philosophical arguments, and qualitative research, all from various African countries. Perhaps most notably, especially for readers in the West, the authors are eager to extend the implications of their discussion to business practices around the world. The introduction of the book opens with the words “We are all African,” in that human life first emerged in Africa, then explicitly invites the West to “recover our bearings” by looking back to Africa (p. xvi). In this review, I offer a condensed overview of their main arguments and observations. Attention will be paid to the authors’ treatment of the philosophical problem of situating virtue ethics within the context of African communitarianism, but the focus of this review is to provide practical insights for the Western reader. These practical insights flow from how the contributing authors conceptualize wisdom and Ubuntu in relation to the application of African virtue ethics in the business world. Special attention will be paid to Chapter 10, where the editor of this volume articulates five timely lessons drawn from the preceding chapters and presented as possible learning opportunities for Western business leaders. I review these five lessons in detail, then offer my own observations on applying the lessons of this book to business culture in the West. …