MANAGEMENT AND LABOUR IN TRANSITION: THE CASE OF ZIMBABWE

The way in which management and related personnel practices contribute to the organisation and control of the labour process during a period of political change intended to move towards socialism is examined. Rhodesia's colonial history and the position of foreign and multinational corporations in the economy have been determining the changes taking place in employing organisations. Workplace democracy and black advancement are two examples of government policy that are used to understand this process. The state is mediating between the contradictory requirements of Zimbabwean workers and peasants on the one hand and foreign and multinational profits on the other. Along with a generalised policy of black advancement, emphasis on workplace democracy forms the central platform in this mediation. The role of some alternative knowledge in the potential for developing managerial forms not specifically based on Western capitalist assumptions concerning time, economy and rationality is discussed. The take‐up of knowledge and practices is not governed by neutral criteria of what works, but by the power of dominant knowledge, allied to other sources of power, to produce practice. Where Western research and practice has taken cultural differences into account at all, it has never questioned the superiority of its models to describe and prescribe its own practices.