As I and a couple of other well-meaning individuals and institutions have watched closely the spate of immorality cascading across continents, the need to reconcile knowledge and establish the right balance in the midst of ideological clashes globally is a priority: however, there is a major problem which becomes immediately obvious taking a deep dive into the nature and texture of our contemporary corporate environment (and this clearly evident in the public sector, and in a few instances, the private sector); and this is a cloud of uncertainty surrounding aspirations of individuals in the corporate workplace. The subject of Job Security is fast going into oblivion and most investors who are interested in building socio-economic systems cannot guarantee employee retainership anymore hence corporate sustainability anymore.
The level of complacency and lack of commitment to a corporate vision, a lack of accountability and an inability to ensure structural stability due to several issues ranging from job discontentment, disillusionment stemming from an inability to perceive a viable future from within the current work viewpoint, lack of adequate utilization of potential or even an overutilization of one’s potential while being unremunerated or under-remunerated (from their perspective), and most of the time a conscious breach of contract terms without recourse to the long term effect of such actions to the organization as well as to the employee-employer relationship etc, are but a few examples.
As the continent of Africa begins to rise out the quagmire of colonial and postcolonial debris, it’s important that we clarify, modify where necessary and also fill up the knowledge gaps which exist in the minds of a generation of individuals who are in their prime, who in most cases in my opinion, may have been victims of a system whose curriculum is structured to produce followers, and as a result are susceptible to any false ideas being offered them through any formal institutional brainwashing process.
It is disheartening indeed to see how the corporate work culture is changing rapidly and tilting mostly towards the negative, meanwhile, we are supposedly in the days of innovation-driven and innovation-based opportunities.
While the boundaries of knowledge are widening and systematic as well as contextual analysis by several professional and global bodies postulate that Africa shall indeed become the economic hotspot of the nations in the near future, it is amazing that social integration is becoming de-emphasized, yet our formal educational institutions are still recycling the same old defective knowledge paradigms, thus causing a terrible confusion which is a product of the mental vacuum inherent in our average knowledge systems. Is it even possible to have such ideological and conceptual incoherence as a society, yet enthusiastically aspire toward greatness without sufficiently probing the foundation of our corporate frame of reference?
For instance, what will the workforce of corporate systems be like in the nearest future? Shall we indeed become subject to AI advancements at the expense of human value? How will the concept of job satisfaction be interpreted in an AI dominated workspace? How can a developing continent without such “endowed advancements” technologically not be on the disadvantage when it comes to reshaping our corporate culture in a way that is uniquely suited to the African heritage and culture, yet be dynamic enough for a multi-racial embrace? What will the concept of “conglomerates” or indigenous multinational organizations be like in the next 10 years, and how will we be able to manage the complexities that come with the western ideology whose perspective of Africa is always interpreted from the place of an underdeveloped continent whose priorities are secondary, and this is peradventure, we have an influx of Westerners, as has been predicted by economists and others, due to the enormity of Africa’s Economic Potential.
Understanding the Corporate Environment
The corporate environment is an entity with diverse realities and an enormous stream of motivations embedded therein. It’s a place of several belief systems, ideologies, religious convictions and professional inclinations, opposing and differing experiences in life and also towers of complexities in human perception about life, people, work and family orientations. These and beyond that which could ever be captured in a single article are the abstract realities surrounding the corporate work environment; therefore, ensuring that the moral imperative of such an entity remains credible over time in the midst of all of those realities captured above and in an ever-changing world, requires more than mere human wisdom. This is why the temptation to take the easier route of manipulation of the human soul through emotional intelligence and other such immorally subtle measures, have obscured our ability to perceive any other way of building in such a way that the structure itself is reflective of and incorporates human dignity and ultimate fulfillment while in pursuit of ones’ career. But for a remnant who are committed to the highest standards of truth in all spheres of their endeavor, and who have also through discipline and conviction-based thought processes, carefully developed over time the capacity to manage these complexities definitely with wisdom from God, we would have been on the brink of corporate self-condemnation, if we truly examine the way in which our social, political and economic systems and institutions have operated in the past two decades, and I state this with regards to the contemporary Nigerian society.
To be continued…
Emmanuel Sam.