I love to rummage through bookstores when I travel abroad. I seek out books on my pet interests that have a local flavour or are written by gifted residents. Well known authors writing in English usually get their books distributed internationally. Yet many excellent books from lesser known writers never get distribution deals. They may not even get catalogued in international publication databases. So I look through the book stacks for those gems that evade my usual search kung-fu. We all ought to look for those serendipitous finds that refresh our thinking.

I did my rummaging routine during a recent trip to South Africa. I brought back a haul of interesting specimens. One book is about applying the ethos of ubuntu to the practice of management. The term “ubuntu” may sound familiar to you, probably because you’ve heard of a computer operating system called Ubuntu Linux (ubuntu.com). Ubuntu means humanness. Ubuntu Linux is so labeled because the developers wanted to make personal-computer usage more natural, equitable, and humane. The same basic idea applies to the application of ubuntu to management. It’s about making our workplaces more respectful, equitable, and humane. Great. But what does that mean exactly?

Ubuntu Management Philosophy: Exporting Ancient African Wisdom into the Global World
by Johann Broodryk (Knowres Publishing, 2005), pp. xv., 255.

Johann Broodryk attempts to answer that question in the book Ubuntu Management Philosophy: Exporting Ancient African Wisdom into the Global World. Broodryk fashions himself as a guru of ubuntu. And when I say guru, I mean guru: an actual guru; this Afrikaner fellow has somehow obtained the status of sangoma, which is a wise shaman in various parts of South Africa.[1] Thus, Broodryk is not just a “management guru”, he’s a management-talk’n guru.

What is Broodryk’s interpretation of ubuntu?

Broodryk starts by making a distinction between “humanness” and the European Enlightenment philosophy of “humanism”. He objects to the parts of humanism about individualism and secularism, yet agrees with the parts about universal human rights and dignity for all. Broodryk’s ubuntu is a collectivist, family-oriented, and spiritual philosophy. He stresses that a person is less than whole when acting in isolation instead of continually acknowledging the web of rich interconnections with others in a community (“I am a person through other persons”, p. 26). Ubuntu is about developing these relations in the spirit of “universal brotherhood” and sharing. Thus, Broodryk defines ubuntu “as a comprehensive, ancient African worldview which pursues primary values of intense humanness, caring, sharing and compassion, and associated values, ensuring a happy and quality human community life in a family spirit or atmosphere.” (p. 13) Those “associated” values include “truth, justice, propriety, harmony, balance, reciprocity and order.” (p. 14) The spiritualism inherent in ubuntu is said to embrace all religions. Broodryk goes a step too far by claiming that this humanness is common to all religions, which is absurd.

I worry that Broodryk’s definition of ubuntu is somewhat revisionist and stylised. Until recently, the notion was preserved within the oral histories of several southern African communities. Broodryk and others convened a series of workshops to record what people know about ubuntu as a lived tradition. The result, as you can imagine, is very much a retrospective, unsettled, and incomplete understanding of the concept and it’s evolution. Moreover, whenever Broodryk encounters a meaning associated with ubuntu he doesn’t like, such as when Zulu elders invoke the notion to resist multi-party democracy, he feels free to revise the notion to suit his wants. The elders are said to practice a “traditional” form of ubuntu, whereas his book is about “modern” ubuntu, an ubuntu that embraces multi-party democracy. See what he did there? So, Mr. Broodryk, how ancient is the folk wisdom that you’re espousing?

When filling the blanks of our historical understanding of the term, Broodryk underscores the importance of interpreting matters from an Afrocentric perspective, as opposed to an Eurocentric or American one. This is a rather fuzzy pan-African set of views that isn’t described up-front because, presumably, it’s quite a controversial idea. It’s controversial because, it hardly needs to be said, Africa is an extremely diverse continent. Appeals to Afrocentrism are nonetheless a catch-all justification that Broodryk uses when adding ideas to his version of ubuntu. All told, Broodryk seems to grant himself the license to define ubuntu as he pleases. I get the impression that Broodryk takes liberties and incorporates all sorts of ideas from Western humanism, as well as African and New Age spiritualism.

At this point, you’re probably thinking: what does all of this have to do with management and the workplace?

Broodryk’s ubuntu management philosophy opposes autocratic rule by detached leaders (”boss-ship”). Instead, it’s about leaders becoming more involved in their workplace by mingling with staff and building relationships. Employees are valued. They are treated with respect, dignity, and friendliness as co-creators. In turn, employees gain a better sense of belonging and well-being, not as a means to an end but as an inherent good. This is different from the “human resources” view of managing people that advocates “using employees well” instead of treating them well.

Broodryk endorses Nelson Mandela’s “shepherd style of management”, which involves leaders listening to people and discussing matters thoroughly before reaching a consensual decision: “The idea is to consult and listen actively and diplomatically to the staff members in a human way, showing care for his or her standpoint, attempting to share (being empathetic to) his or her possible complex problem, showing respect for his or her views and creating a warm, understanding atmosphere to indicate compassion.” (p. 31) Meetings take as long as required in order to achieve consensus. The atmosphere should allow for informality and openness, which encourages “spontaneous participation and trust”, while avoiding aggression, disorder, and chaos. Within the larger literature, this is often called creating a “safe space” for dialogue.

Despite all of Broodryk’s calls for Afrocentrism, most of his specific management and leadership ideas come from Europe and America. His list of ubuntu leadership competencies is plucked holus-bolus from Harvard’s Manager’s Toolkit (2004): caring, coping with ambiguity, persistence, negotiation skills, communication skills, political savviness, a sense of humour, level-headedness, an engaging style, a tendency to set challenging goals, self-awareness, and a long-term outlook. Broodryk adds: “discussing, listening, … and creating warmth and commitment through engagement …” (p. 43) British entrepreneur Richard Branson is hailed as the one who epitomises ubuntu leadership as head of the Virgin Group. When talking about strategising and planning, Broodryk also grabs off-the-shelf approaches from the management literature.

Broodryk eventually talks about how modern management should operate within a larger societal context, not just within the workplace. Broodryk decries the tendency of executives to focus relentlessly on material gain at the expense of the community. In his ideal economic system, everyone treats others as members of an extended family and there is a greater sense of social solidarity (simunye) and collective team-work (shosholoza). People are informal and don’t feel a need to be punctualthey’re on “African time”, says Broodryk, apparently without any sense of how condescending he’s being. The preferred model of the organisation is the co-operative (or Afrikaans term stokvel), the form that is most likely to allow everyone to feel like members of an extended family. There is also a pervasive respect for tradition, ancestors, and religious worship. Such notions of “social capitalism” (or “stakeholder capitalism”) have been waxing and waning in the banter of Europe’s chattering classes for a very long time.

Examples illustrating how all of this actually plays out in South Africa are conspicuously rare. As mentioned, Broodryk tends to use European and American examples despite his professed Afrocentrism. His favourite South African example is the power company Escom. That’s a curious choice. I say that because, in Alan Knott-Craig’s compendium of commentaries about South African society called Don’t Panic (2008), the failure of Escom to provide reliable power is one of the biggest reasons cited for wanting to flee the country. The company is a national embarrassment, to put it bluntly. Broodryk lists a number of companies (including multi-nationals) that have held ubuntu training courses but we are given no indication of how (or whether) those lessons were implemented. We’re told nothing about what those courses contain. I suppose I should also ask the most obvious question: why do the places touted by Broodryk as living the ethos of ubuntu have some of the highest rates of violent crime in the world? Broodryk is silent on the matter except for a tangential discussion of Gavin Hood’s brilliant film about ghetto gangsters called Tsotsi (2005). A lot of South African politicians pay lip-service to ubuntu but I get the sense that the idea is not nearly as revered by the public as Broodryk contends. Maybe that’s why people are asked to take training courses on the subject.

I often recommend books like Broodryk’s Ubuntu Management Philosophy because I think that it’s important for managers to be more cosmopolitan in their outlook. These days, managers need to be more cross-culturally aware and understand business and governance issues from a variety of national perspectives. Unfortunately, Broodryk’s book is very anti-cosmopolitan in outlook. Local insularity, cod-traditionalism, and superstition are being peddled here. That’s what’s ironic about the book’s subtitle, “Exporting Ancient African Wisdom into the Global World”. (More ironic is the fact that the book hasn’t been exported to any extent.)

Although some of Broodryk’s advice about workplace humanness appeals to me, much of that advice amounts to unelaborated platitudes, motherhood statements, and bullet lists of virtues and vices. Admittedly, this book is explicitly about values and philosophy, not necessarily detailed practicalities. Yet when talking about a management philosophy specifically, it’s hard to get away from the realm of the practical and concrete. It isn’t the first time I’ve critiqued a management guru on those grounds, although it is the first time I’ve critiqued a management-talk’n guru.

Review By Peter Stoyko

Update (28.12.09)

Being the word maven that I am, you’ll often find me reading the Schott’s Vocab section of The New York Times. This posting discusses some interesting bits of South African business banter: “tenderpreuners” and “javelin throwers”. Both refer to the corruption that takes place within crony-capitalist systems.

NOTE

[1] I take Broodryk’s Web site at face value for this claim (accessed September 1st, 2009).

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