African Journal of Business Ethics

Announcing a new special issue: Critical perspectives on business ethics

Ugljesa Radulovic — 2025-12-15

We had started to hatch our ideas for this editorial quite a long time ago. In fact, we were in the middle of assembling the Sustainability Stories special issue [Vol 19(1) of 2025] at the time. The main idea that we had, was to use an editorial to announce a new special issue, which is precisely what we are doing. This started out under the rather outrageous running title of “Business Ethics: Putting Lipstick on a Pig? ” We had flitted between this obviously provocative question and the much more suitable-for-polite-company question: “Is it really possible for business to be ethical? ” Of course, both of these may seem like rather strange questions to ask: (a) in a field that has been characterised by fairly generalised optimism for at least a century (see, for example, Filene, 1922); and (b) in an editorial in a business ethics journal. Nonetheless, assuming that we have not reached Fukuyama’s (2020) “End of History”, it is never too late to question that in which one might have invested one's faith. To frame in a little more detail what we have in mind for this special issue, in effect these questions define what could be a rather fundamental debate if the opposing factions were forced together into some sort of dialectical relation.

Decolonise higher education now : Untangling the concepts of decolonisation and decoloniality for management scholars

Chimene Nukunah — 2025-12-15

There is a strong sense within higher education, particularly in formerly colonised regions, that the cries to ‘decolonise’ higher education should be taken seriously across all disciplines. In this article, I recount my experience as a management scholar struggling to grasp the core concepts of the decoloniality discourse as I responded to this call. The outcome of these struggles was a conceptual framework, which I present here. This framework served two purposes for me. Firstly, it highlighted aspects of the colonial project that still persist in every facet of life today. Secondly, it provided a foundation for clarifying the central ideas of ‘decolonisation’ and ‘decoloniality’. My aim in sharing my struggles, my framework, and these clarifications in this article is so that others might find it somewhat easier to attain a degree of conceptual understanding than I did.

Impact of ethical leadership on organizational citizenship behaviour: Group- and individual-level mediators

William Mapena — 2025-12-15

Numerous occurrences of unethical conduct by leaders over the last decade, as well as the proliferation of unethical conduct, have had detrimental effects on their respective organisations and businesses. The undesirable behaviour affects the ability of followers to voluntarily perform beyond contractual obligations. The article examines the impact of ethical leadership on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), focusing on individual- and group-level mediators. The domain of ethical leadership and its impact on OCB is not sufficiently investigated. The research focused on a South African state-owned company in the water services industry using a qualitative case study approach. The research findings identified group- and individual-level mediators and found that
ethical leadership positively influences employee OCB. The research findings add to the literature on ethical leadership–OCB by examining how followers respond to the sequential mediation effect and by offering insight on integrating mediation variables.

State capture in South Africa: A critical analysis of its nature, cost and subsequent reforms

Nkosingiphile Mkhize — 2025-12-15

This article presents a critical and comprehensive analysis of state capture in South Africa, delving into its historical evolution, structural mechanisms, and long-term repercussions. It also examines the extensive financial and social costs associated with state capture, particularly its role in exacerbating economic inequality and fostering systemic governance failures. State capture, characterised by the deliberate co-optation of public institutions by private interests, has significantly altered the operational integrity of the South African government. By systematically manipulating state resources, elected officials and public sector actors have entrenched corruption, thereby undermining public trust and weakening institutional frameworks. The research adopts a qualitative methodology, employing a rigorous desktop analysis of secondary data, including governmental reports, academic literature, and investigative findings from commissions such as the Zondo Commission. The findings indicate that, beyond direct financial misappropriation, state capture has also eroded South Africa’s ability to attract foreign investment, diminished economic competitiveness, and perpetuated sociopolitical instability. Unlike previous research that primarily focused on financial losses, this study expands the discourse to include a critical examination of the sociopolitical and developmental dimensions of state capture. By doing so, it highlights the urgent need for comprehensive governance reforms, stringent accountability mechanisms, and the reinforcement of democratic institutions to mitigate the long-term consequences of state capture in South Africa.

Refusal as method: Reading business ethics backwards from conquest to compliance

Sandiso Bazana — 2025-12-15

This article offers a radical rereading of business ethics in South Africa by proposing refusal as an ethical method and an epistemic stance. Taking a recent editorial’s worry about a shortage of publishable manuscripts as a signal, it argues that the apparent quiet from African scholars is not disengagement but a choice: a refusal to perform legibility on pre-scripted terms. Reading the field backwards – from missionary schools to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) dashboards – the article traces how publishing standards, classroom habits, and review rubrics have come to reward clarity, composure, and tidy endings while sidelining grief, opacity, and interruption.
Refusal is offered not as retreat, but as practice: honouring memory, withholding translation when translation distorts, and insisting on ethical sovereignty. Here, African thought is not context or case; it arrives as concept, setting questions and methods on its own terms. The article asks whether business ethics can learn to hear differently, and what changes in editorial criteria, teaching, and citation would be needed to make that
possible. Refusal, in this framing, declines domestication, refuses to make pain palatable, and resists trading voice for recognition. It invites a field capacious enough for dissonance, opacity, and ancestral obligation – where cadence, pause, and address can carry argument. Refusal is not nihilism; it is the architecture for another kind of listening and a different future for the discipline. The wager is simple: if we change how we hear, we widen what can be thought, taught, and published.