The successful implementation of development management principles and ideas in Africa has

been hampered by a plethora of obstacles. Factors like corruption, ethnicity, nepotism, un-
availability of skilled personnel and partisanship have all played a significant role in hampering
the successful implementation of development management principles. Fayols principles have
been used on the continent for generations with mixed successes, but the fact that some
countries still apply them today is an indication that the principles and ideas have had a positive
impact on the African continent. Bottlenecks like patronage and ethnicity were bound to exist
and hamper the successful implementation of the development management principles because
some of these foreign management systems generally failed to achieve the expected goals as
they disrupted African cultural inertia and social environment.

To begin with, there is no distinctive definition of the term management, as it is considered

as a process, a thought or as a group of executive running an organization (Natalooka,
2011). However, different management scholars have given various definitions to the term.
For example, Hitts etal, (1983) defined management as the effective and efficient integration
and coordination of resources to achieve the desired objectives. Koontz and Weihrich (1990),
in their own contribution defined management as a process of designing and maintaining
an environment in which individuals working together in groups, efficiently to accomplish
selected aims. Similarly, Megginson, Mosley and Pietri (1989), emphasize on the functions
of management in providing bedrock for defining management. They defined management
as working with human, financial and physical resources to determine, interpret and achieve
organizational objectives by performing the functions of planning, organizing, staffing
leading and controlling. Therefore if we are to Integrate the above definitions, the whole
idea of management is centered towards as a process or a series of activities of getting
things done through and with others” (Natalooka, 2011; Kreitner 2004).

The concept of management has been around Africa for centuries even before the coming of
Europeans. Fashoyin (2005 pp.43) notes that management in Africa is strongly rooted in
cultural beliefs and traditions. The African system had developed its own management system
but however the evolution and development of indigenous management theories and practices
in Africa has been seriously affected and retarded by colonialism. The arrival of colonialism in
Africa in the 19thcentury disrupted the people’s cultural beliefs and traditions, and thus
“triggered the beginning of what may be called “colonized African management” (Eze, 1995,
pp. 136-137). The colonial administration introduced western management theories and
practices, considered as the drivers and the panacea for the continent’s socio-politico-economic

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development. Western scholarship and literature generally devalued and deprecated the
astonishing management prowess and practices of early African civilizations, as evidenced, for
example, in the building of the great Egyptian pyramids. The colonial regimes further
entrenched their stranglehold of the African society by creating both administrative
bureaucracies and colonial companies that exploited the vast natural resources of the continent.
They also strived to create a workforce that was made up of the best African brains and trained
in western management principles and practices to supply energies for the colonial
establishments. The growing influence of western ideas led to the adoption of management
principles of Henri Fayol and Frederick Taylor in the early 20th century. Africa was left with
no choice but to integrate these principles into their own culture though some of them where
inapplicable to the African society in several spheres. The effective implementation of
principles of management in Africa was bound to fail from the onset because any management
education programme that facilitates the entrenchment of western management theories and
practices in Africa is not desirable. The goal therefore is to enable the African manager to
transform imported theories and concepts into acceptable cultural norms which can then be
applied to management practices in Africa (Fashoyin, 2005, pp. 45).

Henri Fayol’s development principles of management shall be used in this essay in evaluating
the bottlenecks that have hampered the successful implementation of these principles in the
African context. Fayol (1949, pp. 19–20) developed 14 general principles of management
which he stated were flexible in nature as they could be applied in any institution across the
globe. These 14 principles were, division of work, Authority and
Responsibility,Discipline,Unity of command, Unity of direction, Subordination of individual
interests to the general interest,remuneration,centralization,Scalar chain (line of
authority),Order ,Equity, Stability of tenure of personnel, Initiative and Esprit de corps (Spirit
of cooperation. According to Fayol, these principles of management can be used to guide
proper implementation of management processes such as planning, organizing, commanding,
coordinating and controlling (Fells, 2000). Among Fayol’s 14 principles of management, only
a few of these principles are however applicable to the African situation.

Furthermore according to Fayol 1949 the principles in management are considered as

fundamental truths existing at a given time, and which explain the relationships that exist
between two or more sets of variables. The principles are intended to guide thoughts and
actions. They are developed from experience acquired through human interaction with the
environment in the normal course of working, and carrying out responsibilities in

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organizational setting. The African situation is rather unfortunate since colonialism did not
permit the nurturing of indigenous management principles. If these principles were developed,
they would have furnished the framework for theorizing in management, within the African
context.

For the purpose of this discussion a few principles shall be highlighted which have posed the
greatest obstacle towards the successful and effective use of the development principle in
Africa. Henri Fayol’s principle of authority and responsibility is one principle that has faced
the most obstacles in its implementation in Africa. According to Fayol authority is the right of
superiors to give orders and power to maintain discipline whereas responsibility is the
obligation of subordinates to obey the superiors. Fayol believed that authority and
responsibility go together. He further notes that whenever authority is exercised, responsibility
arises. So there needs to be a proper balance between authority and responsibility (Fayol, 1949;
Pryor & Taneja, 2010; Wren, 1995, 2001).Even though Fayol argued in his principle that there
needed to be proper distribution of authority in the organization for maintaining balance with
responsibility, the situation in Africa is however different otherwise. In Africa deep
beauoracratic practices are a characteristic in both private and public services. Due to this
beauoracratic nature, in most African institutions the authority and responsibility of officials
has been so elevated that the ordinary person finds it difficult to interact with top officials. One
needs to go through a lot of processes in order to communicate with top officials.

Furthermore an inferiority complex has been created under this principle in most African
institutions as most workers feel that though they might have influential positions especially in
the public sector they had responsibility without authority. This is very true in countries like
Zimbabwe particularly in the public service where a person can be a director but has got little
authority over his or her department. The system is so beaurocratic and authotarian that in the
end most of these top officials are looked over when it comes to real decision making. They
will only be called upon to be responsible of the actions that would have been already been
taken by the top brass. Resultantly this has led to the collapse of the proper admisntration of
the public service and the growing un-popularity of governments as politicians do most of the
management instead of suitable qualified managers. In the private sector the situation has been
a little different especially in those companies or organisations where the founders head the
institutions. These organisations have often faced a crisis of leadership and poor growth as a
whole because the leaders would be having excessive authority on employees. Therefore in
this scenario the effective implementation of development management principles is severely

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compromised as there is too much concentration of power on the company or organisation
owners because of the absence of non- separation of management and ownership. These
owners as noted by Fayol tend not to have the relevant skills or management experience to do
certain tasks but implement decisions that tend to bring the whole project down. (Fayol 1949
p.8) Therefore in light of this, there is need for the separation of ownership and management
and this must go hand in hand with the separation between authority and responsibility to
enable the development principles effective in the African continent

Moreover bottlenecks like patronage and corruption have been more characteristic in the
management principle of remuneration of the personnel. This principle implies the money an
employer pays in return for work to the employees. Fayol argues that remuneration/wages/
salary of the personnel working in the organization needs to be fair to provide satisfaction to
both the employees and employers. It depends on general economic condition of the
organization, cost of living and the capacity of the individual employees to bring out the best
of their skills. (Fayol, 1949; Pryor & Taneja, 2010; Wren, 1979, 1995). Good remuneration of
employees is seen as one of the critical initiatives that a government or private company can
take if development is to take place. In cases where institutions fail to pay their workers
problems like corruption may take place, for example, low remuneration in Africa has
contributed to the manifestation of low administrative capacity, poor organisational discipline
and an inability to enforce rules by the authorities as employees will end up doing whatever
they so wish to do to earn a living. This has always been a problem in many developing
countries, particularly those that were hit by sharp economic downturns.

Colclough (1997b) shows how a dramatic meltdown of the economy led to a decline in real
pay levels in Zambia during the 1980s. The recession led to public employees adopting all
kinds of survival strategies to make ends meet: Colclough notes that a new practice known as
‘daylighting’ was introduced. This literally meant that the workers had now resorted to doing
a second job during office hours. Their second work usually involved private trading at work,
effectively turning offices into marketplaces; and, of course, it brewed corruption.
Organisational discipline and cohesion went out of the window in the process as the authorities
feared widespread strikes and a government lock down if they prohibited the workers from
doing second jobs in the civil service. In many African countries all kinds of public
transactions, major or minor, are subject to the payment of bribes. Some areas like policing,
public works, customs administration are generally more lucrative to staff than others. Once a
problem that used to be pushed under the carpet by scholars and practitioners alike, corruption

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has become a major item on the agenda of public sector reform in developing countries
(Klitgaard 1997b)

According to Fayol, initiative as a principle of management informs individuals working in the

organization to display their interest and efforts towards the organization. Initiative of all
represents the strength of the organization and so each individual working in the organization
needs to take initiative towards maximum utilization of his/her capacity (Fayol, 1949 ).In order
to develop initiative towards organization, the individual working in the organization needs to
be positively motivated towards work. One method that worker can be satisfied by his or her
job is to offer attractive working conditions and to reward the person what is due according to
his or her work not less. Positive attitude towards organization or work indicates satisfaction
of the employees where negative attitude represents a source of dissatisfaction of the employees
towards the organization or work itself (Vroom, 1995, p. 115).

Many African countries have experimented with performance management initiatives. Perhaps
the most common is the introduction of modern performance-oriented staff appraisal systems.
The introduction of such systems is a fairly straightforward though it is a labour- and resource-
intensive exercise. The difficulty comes afterwards, in linking appraisals to career rewards and
sanctions. Individual performance bonuses are often put forward as a means to achieve this,
but governments have shown a marked reluctance to go down this road. Resultantly this
principle has found it difficult to apply in the African context. This is because of politics of
patronage and nepotism that usually come attached in rewarding workers. There are a number
of cases where unqualified people are always rewarded with the most lucrative employment
packages and those who do the hard work continue being side-lined. This has created low
motivation among employees towards the organisation and resultantly the organisation will
likely fail to achieve its aims.

However, Nunberg (1995) is sceptical of the value of performance-pay schemes, saying it is

much more important to link promotions to performance. But in many African, Asian and Latin
American countries, promotions have continued to be tied to seniority or examinations. Most
organisations and governments in Africa have done a good job of always bringing up new staff
appraisal systems, and instruct managers to appraise their staff carefully and impartially
without fear or favour, but usually the organisations and governments then suddenly pull back
and start relying on the judgement of those managers in promoting and rewarding people which
in turn can create corrupt and favouritism tendencies. In Zimbabwe, for instance, the delegation

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of staffing powers to senior officials has been ‘easily be abused which has thus created
“personal empires”, “regional cliques”, and even “ethnic enclaves” which could be used as
effective weapons for the self-preservation of the senior public servants (Makumbe 1997:
p.10). If left unchecked therefore this will likely lead to conflicts and insubordinations within
organisations because the people that are rewarded are not the one that deserve the rewards

The management principle of subordination of individual interest to general interest can also
be linked with the above. Fayol argues that the interest of one employee or group of employees
working in the organization should not be above the interest of the organization. Whenever
there is conflict between the interest of the organization and that of individual employee, the
employee should be ready to give up his/her interest for the sake of organization (Fayol, 1949).
This can be easily linked with the failure to practice the principle of initiative. Politics of
patronage and nepotism in Africa has resulted in the employment of workers who in the end
are not answerable to anyone but those who employed them and usually those that employed
them will be top officials which effectively gives them the allowance to do whatever they want
within the organisation. The interests and objectives of the organisation are thus put at risk and
in most cases in Africa individuals that put their own interests above those of the organisation
do not resign because they are protected by the so called supreme leader. In Zimbabwe
ministers that have put their own interests above their line of work are simply shuffled from
one ministry to the other but not fired thus signifying a great obstacle in the successful
implementation of development management principles.

To add on, the absence of clear hierarchical structures in some African countries have resulted
in the flourish of corrupt practices and insubordination thus creating a bottleneck in the
implementation of the development management principles of hierarchical structure and unity
of command. According to Fayol’s administrative theory, hierarchical structure is the basic
premise of authority relationships in the organizations. He further notes that hierarchical
structure refers to arrangement of individuals on a superior-subordinate relationship in an
organization.(Fayol 1949 p.12) However in Africa this principle has not been transparent in its
application resulting in a major conflict emanating between the top management and the
ordinary employees. The imposition of unpopular and inexperienced managers at the top has
resulted in the disruption of free flow information through prescribed channels. Though
hierarchical structures exist in some organisations some of them have not been followed
because of patronage and nepotism. Resultantly a lower level employees who is well connected

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with the top management can by-pass all other people in between and be answerable to the top
management resulting in conflicts within the organisation.

Additionally this can lead to the hampering in achieving the development management
principle of unity of command. This principle states that an individual should receive order
from one source only. Dual command is viewed as un-ethical and can lead to insubordination
within an institution. Fayol (1949) advocates "One head and one plan" which means that group
efforts on a particular plan be led and directed by a single person. This enables effective co-
ordination of individual efforts and energy and also fulfils the principles of unity of command
and brings uniformity in the work of same nature. In this way the principle of direction create
dedication to purpose and loyalty. It emphasizes the attainment of common goal under one
head. This has been quite successful in Europe where the unity of command is more transparent
and applicable. However this noble principle has created dictatorships within the African
context, whereby those that have been tasked to lead or direct the affairs of the organisations
have resorted to abusing their power. Furthermore more power has been transferred to one
individual and these individuals have usually done their best to put more energy and resources
in cementing their positions of power rather than leading the organisations. The chain of
command in Africa has been broken by politics of patronage, nepotism leading to individuals
heading these institutions’ being surrounded by boot lickers who have nothing to offer in
bringing direction to the organisation except fulfilling their own selfish interests with the help
of the leader.
Stability of tenure of personnel is one of the key development management principles. In this
principle, Fayol argued that an organization needs to avoid high rate of employee turnover
because training of new employees is expensive and time consuming (Rodrigues, 2001). Fayol
further noted that when there is stability of tenure of personnel, the people working in the
organization feel a sense of job security. (Fayol 1949) In Africa institutions across all sectors
have had challenges in creating a long term employment contract with their workers. Some of
the reasons have been the fear to folk out more money in terms of pensions if a person retires
and the reluctance to be dragged in courts in the event that an employee is involved contract
dispute. The greatest challenge however that has hindered the successful implementation of
this principle has been funding. Both the public and private sectors in Arica face funding
challenges. To sustain their salary budgets most of these institution rely of foreign aid. The
African continent is still heavily dependent on foreign aid thus at times they will not likely put
in to practice some development management principles. So therefore in the event that the

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resources are minimised most workers are bound to be laid off resulting in a high turnover of
staff, a situation which reduces productivity in any institution as more money will be
channelled towards training or refresher trainings for new and old staff members. NGO’s have
been the major perpetrators because they often give their employees short term contracts which
are sometimes renewable. This has led to NGO projects failing and incomplete sometimes
because of the continued high turnover of staff. As a result employee initiative towards work
is not productive as there are less chances and time of making use of the maximum capacity of
each employee to strengthen the work of the organization. Workers who usually work on these
short time contracts usually want to maximise the as much as possible on the opportunities and
benefits offered to them that they end up looting resources from the companies so that in that
short time they accrue so much wealth. This is unlike in a situation whereby a worker is offered
a long term employment with an attractive exit package at the end. The chances of that person
being engaged in corrupt activities is greatly reduced and the work of that person will likely be
in the best interest of the organisation.

In light of the above bottlenecks that characterise the practice of development management
principles in Africa it should be noted that in general The Fayol’s approach towards
management was based only upon personal experience and limited observations. His
celebrated work ‘The principles of Management’ is just a mere illusion because most
of the principles lacks the qualities of good empirical research. This is why the principles
are not applicable to all organization and sometimes one principle contradicts another
therefore they Lack Universality of Principles of Management. Fayol’s administrative
management theory agitates the universality application of principles of management in all
spheres of life. However evidence on the ground shows that most of these principles are
not applicable in certain circumstances. For example, the principle of centralization of
authority and that of unity of direction are difficult to put in place, while specialization
is in conflict with the principle of Unity of command. Nevertheless from the above
discussion it was seen that corruption has been the backbone of obstacles that makes the
implementation of the development management principles difficult. So in the past few years
some African countries have tried to root out corruption within their management systems. For
example in Ghana, the creation of the National Revenue Service served as an opportunity to
weed out staff from the old customs and internal revenue services who were thought to be
corrupt. One of the reasons why the remaining staff had their pay increased was to reduce the
temptation to take bribes. Other anti-corruption mechanisms were also put into place, including

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a public complaints facility (Chand and Moene 1999; p. 166). Likewise in Tanzania: customs
and tax officials who appeared to be living beyond their legitimate means were not re-employed
by the new revenue authority.
Several countries like Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana and Nigeria have over the years
created anti-corruption bodies to combat corrupt practices by public and private officials. But
however even though the commissions have the necessary powers and political backing, they
must still rely on the normal judicial machinery of the state when bringing cases to trial. The
effectiveness of an anti-corruption commission ultimately depends on the integrity and
efficiency of the prosecutor’s office and the courts. Weaknesses in these areas can eventually
destroy the commission’s public credibility, even though they are beyond its control (Polidano
and Hulme 1997). In Zimbabwe for example the anti-corruption commission had the support
of the government during the initial stages but when the commission tried to implicate top
ministers like Obert Mpofu its credibility was questioned and in the end failed to achieve its
objectives. In South Africa the anti-corruption commission there has over the years brought
corruption charges against top government officials including the president but the commission
has thus far made very little in roads in prosecuting the top officials. Therefore in light of this
it can be said that anti-corruption boards in Africa are created to create the impression on paper
that the governments are doing something to combat corruption but on the practical side they
are just toothless bulldogs.

In conclusion it can be noted that The use of western benchmarks in the evaluation of African
leadership and management leads to the conclusion that Africa’s stunted growth or
underdevelopment was essentially due to poor leadership and management, and that the
application of western leadership and management theories was and is the needed solution to
the complex social, economic and political problems of the continent. The benefits of the
development management principles are promoting research in management and through the
application of the development management principles, the manager co-ordinates the efforts of
individuals thereby, reaching the social attainment by summation of the various individual
objectives. The development management principles also facilitate management analysis and
set the benchmark for training of managers. Osuala (2000) notes the value of management
principles in helping mangers make more accurate decisions, since principles are developed
from experience and can be applied. Principles enable people pass information from one
generation to the next, and thus avoiding waste of re-inventing the wheel. Therefore though
these development management principles may have their own shortfalls, they are critical to

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Africa’s development. The challenge has been how the Africans have interpreted the principles
and put them into practice. They have made them almost inapplicable to Africa because of
corruption and nepotism to a larger extent.

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