About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The aim of the African Journal of Business Ethics (AJoBE) is to contribute to the expansion of business ethics as an academic field in Africa. Towards this end, our main focus is on stories from Africa and about Africa. This focus includes not only the contextual or the material, but also the philosophical. We strongly encourage work that reflects on the activities of businesses in Africa from the perspective of African epistemologies, African ontologies and African axiologies. We focus on Africa for no other reason than that we are infinitely curious about the richness of experience and thought inherent in the diversity of our continent and her people.

AJoBE is the official journal of the Business Ethics Network of Africa (BEN-Africa http://www.benafrica.org/). AJoBE is published by African Sun Media and hosted by SUNJournals. AJoBE is accredited with the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) and with South Africa's Department of Higher Education.

AJoBE is an e-journal only. 

Types of Articles:

We invite scholars and practitioners to submit manuscripts as per the following categories and classifications:

  • General paper
  • Short communication (3 000 words or less)
  • Rejoinder
  • Book or conference review

Classification of Article:

  • Speculative philosophy
  • Opinion paper
  • Theoretical paper
  • Empirical research report (quantitative)
  • Empirical research report (qualitative) 

Please make use of the online submission process (remember to first register as an author).

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts are desktop reviewed by the editorial team on receipt. If it is felt that a manuscript is within the scope of the journal, and that it stands some reasonable chance of a favourable review, the manuscript will then be sent for double-blind peer review.

Only manuscripts that conform to the Author Guidelines and that have been screened for plagiarism through Turnitin (or equivalent) will be considered. The Turnitin (or equivalent) report must be submitted as a supplementary file.

The success and sustainability of AJoBE is contingent upon your willingness to not only publish in, but also to review manuscripts for AJoBE.

Publication Frequency

Volume issues will be published as soon as the full quota of articles for the issue are ready for publication.

Open Access Policy

African Journal of Business Ethics is an Open Access journal. All content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, as underwritten by the license CC BY NC ND, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. 

Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Ethical Guidelines

The AJoBE is committed to ensuring sound ethical principles in its publication and quality of manuscripts. Any kind of ethical misconduct is unacceptable. AJoBE does not tolerate plagiarism or any copyright infringement. All parties involved in the editorial processes are expected to conform to all standards of professional ethical behaviours.

Editors

Editor/s should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of sound academic merit. Following desk review, the manuscript is forwarded for blind peer-review to reviewers selected on the basis of their expertise. Two reviewers will make a recommendation to accept, reject or modify the manuscript.

The Editor/s ensures fair review of all manuscripts for intellectual content. Information regarding manuscripts is kept confidential.

Authors:

Reporting Standards: Authors should present an accurate account of their original research as well as an objective discussion of its significance.

Originality: Authors must ensure that what they are submitting is original.

Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publications: Authors should not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently. It is also expected that the author will not publish redundant manuscripts or manuscripts describing the same research in more than one journal.

Acknowledgement of Sources: Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have been influential in the research work.

Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study. The corresponding author is expected to ensure that all the co-authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript and the inclusion of their names as co-authors.

Fundamental Errors in Published Works: If at any point of time, the author(s) discover a significant error or inaccuracy in submitted manuscript, then the error or inaccuracy must be reported to the editor.

Ethical Clearance: For any paper reporting on research involving human participants, we require authors to supply a research ethics clearance certificate from their affiliated institution.

Reviewers

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly and constructively with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper.

Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse themself from the review process.

Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Reviewers should note that English is not the first language of many of our authors. We therefore ask that they do not pay significant attention to language issues unless these fundamentally undermine the arguments that are being advanced. AJoBE subjects all papers to a formal language editing process once they have been accepted on academic grounds.

Author Fees

As of 31 January 2019, South African authors will be charged a standard rate of R1,500 per article for publication in AJoBE. This article fee, together with a significant subsidy from the Business Ethics Network of Africa, covers the publication costs for the paper. The article fee is only applicable for accepted articles (i.e. once your article has been approved for publication, you will be invoiced, and your article will only be placed on receipt of the fee).

 

Since AJOBE is an accredited journal, the fee is fully recoupable via publication subsidies issued by the South African Department of Education. Due to the fact that research is not necessarily subsidised by the governments of other countries, the standard charge of R1500 per article is not applicable to international scholars or scholars from other African countries.

Digital Preservation

African Journal of Business Ethics. This journal migrated from the Stellenbosch University preservation platform to the PKP PN (Preservation Network) platform.

Previous Sponsors

Journal History

AJoBE was established in 2005 by the founding editor, Prof Leon van Vuuren, as the official journal of the Business Ethics Network Africa, in collaboration with Globethics.net.

Subsequent editors include:

  • Minka Woermann 2013 – 2017
  • Dr Schalk Engelbrecht 2017 – 2018
  • Prof Kevin Behrens 2018 – 2019
  • Prof Neil Eccles 2020 – present

From 2005 to 2013, AJoBE was published by Medknow Publications and Media / Wolters Kluwer. In 2014, AJoBE migrated to the SUNJournals platform, and changed its publisher to African Sun Media.