WANDJI Augustin, DBA

Pr Damien Mourey

Management in the African context and hypergrowth of business organisations in Cameroon.

The management of companies in Africa are often complicated and complex because of African cultural traits (community habit, relationship to time, relationship to ethnicity and religion, hierarchical distance, etc.) which are often considered by authors as blocking factors for African business growth. However, how can we understand that in the same cultural context, some companies are successful, and others are not? This question arises from the in situ observation of a particular management situation of a company (AFISA) in the Cameroonian context which attracts our scientific curiosity in the sense that it is managed in a dynamic strong growth qualified as hypergrowth. The rapid development and management of this African company amaze us compared to the unanimous considerations established by several authors on the fact that hypergrowth is a disruptive phenomenon which exerts a strong pressure on all the resources of the company and also leads to a permanent review of its organization in order to absorb an ever larger size. As a result of these observations, we finally wonder how the management of this company develops and makes possible the management of hypergrowth in the Cameroonian context in these terms: How do African cultural traits make it possible to develop and manage hyper-growth dynamic of a company in an African context such as Cameroon? Our research aims to bring a critical dimension to management in an African context in order to twist a certain number of clichés based on African cultural traits and to propose an integrated model of development and management of a dynamic of hyper-growth. of the company in the Cameroonian context. Consequently, our in-depth investigation carried out within the AFISA entity with a qualitative approach leads to appreciable conclusions. In fact, our results show that certain African cultural traits, often considered as brakes, make it possible to develop a dynamic of strong growth of the company and can be combined with modern management tools to maintain and manage the tensions induced by this phenomenon in the market. Cameroonian context. Finally, we believe that African management is not inevitable and support the thesis of the hybridization of management practices in an African context.