ABSTRACT

In the previous chapter, on ‘southern’ relational enterprise micro foundations, we focused, in particular, on ‘the divine will of Africa’, via Cashbuild as a South African industrial democracy, as opposed to the universalistic and positivistically oriented empiricism or rationalism, as the basis for business enterprise, if not also economics. As such, we made the point, enterprise-wise, that such a relational approach to ‘the African stories we are’, as per the Cashbuild case above, thereby recognizing and sharing communal value, has suffered from benign neglect. Rather, empirical (western) and rational (northern) story-slants, and thereby approaches to enterprise and indeed economics, in terms of ‘exchange’ if not also ‘use’ value, have dominated in both economic theory and practice.