Secondment in Ghana: D. Sack

What is the local context for business and for the adoption of or reluctance to global management norms? Detlef Sack (University of Bielefeld) worked during his secondment at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) in June 2019 on this issue. Regarding the comparative observation of the local context, he carried out a Qualitative Comparative Analysis. He identified notable differences of the narratives of ‘good‘ local business environment within the transnational indicator industry. Indicators, scores, and rankings based on regional sources (e.g. African Development Bank, Afrobarometer) differ notably from the ‘global’ sources (e.g. World Bank, World Economic Forum). Of crucial matter in this regard are different ideas and assessments on welfare, safety, and free trade as conditions for local business. Prof. Sack presented his concept and his findings to 40 PhD Students of the UGBS. Issues of the training exercise and the discussion were the production of expertise and knowledge on the local business environment on the one hand and the restrictions of numbers against the backdrop of the importance of informal business on the other hand. Informal business is by definition not being registered in statistical accounts. However, scores assess informality on the base of surveys and expertise. Students have learned that there is no ‘one’ local business environment but different stories about it.