Would Africa’s Lag To Modernity Not Be An Opportunity For So-Called Civilized Nations To Build A Better World?

• ABSTRACT Using the case study Ellet framework, the author examines to what extent boosting Africa’s rise is a global opportunity for so-called civilized nations to make a better world. Africans are facing an array of challenges. Most people consider that Africa needs to develop to reduce poverty and inequality, while issues like education, demography, urbanization, or climate change are in all minds. Most advanced discourses argue that the modernity lag of Africa must be filled by building infrastructure, developing trade, or managing international investment programs while promoting human development, education, and health, but what Africans want to do according to their traditions is neither well understood nor taken into consideration.Engulfed since the dawn of time in the Dominant-Dominated Syndrome (DDS), managing the Tradition-Modernity Balance (TMB)properly is an unresolved issue. This problem, which draws back to the issue of knowing how Organizational Justice (OJ) and Organizational Change (OC) must be managed both by each African country and Africa as a whole, is mainly the result of a lack of care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. Such issue must not be only addressed by Africans, but by all so-called civilized nations that need to ask themselves whether Africa’s lag in modernity would not be an opportunity for so-called civilized nations to build a better world, and for which intergovernmental organizations have to play an important role.

  1. Introduction

  Africans face an array of challenges[1], and a central interrogation remains: why did the development of current policies for Africa fail, and how could they be improved? Most people consider that Africa needs to develop to reduce poverty and inequality, while issues like education, demography, urbanization, or climate change are in all minds[2]. Most advanced discourses argue that the modernity lag of Africa must be filled by building infrastructure, developing trade, or managing international investment programs[3] while promoting human development, education, and health[4] [5] [6], but what Africans want and are willing to do according to their traditions is neither well understood nor taken into consideration. Therefore, there is a need to understand better what problem is standing behind the difficulties for Africa to rise[7].

   

  2. Diagnosis

   

  Africa is a diversity of people, countries, and traditions. Each country follows a unique development, and what explains the relative success of one and the missteps of another is unclear. How can we explain such a disparity of results and find the right way to boost Africa to rise as a whole? Taking a look at history, engulfed since the dawn of time into the Dominant-Dominated Syndrome (DDS), Africans cannot manage the Tradition-Modernity Balance (TMB) properly, which is a problem that has to be examined.

  From the author’s perspective, this problem – which draws back to the issue of knowing how organizational change and organizational justice must be managed – is mainly the result of a lack of care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge while proposing no differentiated treatments (e.g., politic, economic or social) to country according to their specific needs. Such an issue must not be only addressed by Africans, but by all so-called civilized nations that need to ask themselves –instead of believing that all countries must be developed within the same rules of so often called “modernity” – whether Africa’s lag to modernity would not be an opportunity for them not only to build trade but to provide dedicated attention while promoting specific development tools, country by country, for rising Africa and building a better world.

   

      2.1. The Dominant-Dominated Syndrome

  Since the dawn of time, the expression of power has shaped human behavior. That expression of power is called by the author the Dominant-Dominated Syndrome (DDS). While looking at nature, most human beings consider physical force as a means of power. At the same time, due to sexual harassment, women have invented for the first time institutional power by deciding where and when it was the best time to copulate. Then, progressively, men took over that power by substitution of organizational laws with religions, until the physical force came back to their advantage through the setting of military orders. Therefore, the DDS has evolved according to civilizations through the ages, and we are currently facing the newly born power of information as described hereafter:

   

  Sacred order The power of religion

  Military order The power of force

  Economic order The power of money

  Knowledge order The power of information

   

  Recently, we have entered into a new era that regulates most of our social relations, where data progressively replaces money as the expression of power. New narratives and categories of modern slavery are created[8] [9] [10]. Thus, the DDS is mainly the result of a lack of responsibility of human intelligence in judgment[11], which rank competencies, and categorize environments by defining classes of economic power more or less related to quantities of money or data controlled. Nevertheless, we do not know yet what it means to understand (e.g., we are not yet able to manage the automation of unstructured data or Big Data). We are still living within the illusion of being intelligent, and this lack of knowledge reinforces the Dominant-Dominated Syndrome. Therefore, we need to fight for fraternity on the road to moderation[12].

   

         2.2. The Tradition-Modernity Balance

  Going toward modernity is not a fatality, but a choice given to people. That choice is what the author calls; the Tradition-Modernity Balance (TMB). Instead, most modern societies demand that other people share their views on development, with no other consideration than being convinced that it is the only way to move forward.

  A lot of so-called civilized countries are claiming resolutions such values as progress, freedom, or equality, which most of the time are neither questioned nor respected by those who are promoting them. Despite the inability or unwillingness of most countries to take care of the real interests of people, some nations have resisted modernity and survived (e.g., Australians’ Aborigen, Alaskans’ Inuit, Africans’ Dogon, Indonesians’ Mentawai…). Moreover, these peoples have preserved some ancestral habits, that need to be considered common goods for humanity as a whole (e.g., laughing battle to solve conflicts, dream time as a means of education, and so on), and from which so-called modernity’s wave could draw knowledge of wisdom (e.g., Burkinabe’s healers).

  Although civilizations and cultures are ephemeral and go back and forth like fashion, there is a universal need for human beings to preserve a fraternal understanding, whatever the landmarks used to make decisions about going toward modernity, while repeating that such a decision relies primarily on the will to care people first. According to Lewis (1954), who got a Nobel Prize in 1979 for his work[13], many less-developed or underdeveloped economies have a dual structure and are divided into a modern sector and a traditional sector[14].  The traditional sector is mainly associated with rural life, agriculture, and backward institutions and technologies, while the modern sector is mainly associated with urban life, modern industry, and the use of advanced technologies. Thus, for generations of development economists building on Lewis’s insights, the problem of development became a means for moving people and resources out of the traditional sector, agriculture and the countryside, into the modern sector, industry, and cities.

   

  3. Proof of Causes

   

  Showing why the diagnosis is valid takes up most of the problem[15]. Therefore, each cause is examined in depth hereafter due to the problem situation and responses that are currently suggested for developing Africa.

   

      3.1. Lack of Care

  Despite the inability or unwillingness of most countries to take care of the real interests of peoples, some nations have resisted modernity and survived (e.g., Australia’s Arborigen, Alaskan’s Inuit, African’s Dogon, Indonesian’s Mentawai) while preserving some ancestral habits that need to be considered as common goods for the whole humanity (e.g., laughing battle to solve conflicts, dream time as a mean of education and so on), and from which so-called modernity’s wave could draw knowledge of wisdom (e.g., Burkinabe’s healers). Although civilizations and cultures are ephemeral and go back and forth like fashion, there is a universal need for human beings to preserve a fraternal understanding, whatever the landmarks used to make decisions about going toward modernity, while repeating that such a decision relies primarily on the willingness to care for people.

   

      3.2. Building infrastructure

  Africa is challenged by the lack of adequate infrastructure and provision of basic services for workers who migrate to the cities in search of jobs, pushing them into vulnerable, low-quality employment[16], which demonstrates a lack of knowledge about the real needs of the population. Otherwise, when building infrastructure, a central question is who benefits. What is the real value, and more generally, what makes a resource valuable? Advanced studies show that in a firm, the role of management in understanding the potential of resources to create value is as important as the demand side factors[17].

  Most of the time, people who represent the demand side, do not take care of local interests, mainly because they have their logic of valuation, which is often far away from the interests of people. They reveal knowledge to their advantage with little consideration of the ecosystem in which transformation (i.e., innovative activity) is planned to take place[18].

        There is a lack of care for the local interest of people to the benefit of those generally funding or later managing that infrastructure (e.g., private or public sector). The result is that local people have difficulty appropriating the value of such infrastructures[19], which often disturbs their way of life. Thus, when Wangari Muta Maathai said: “You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them. Therefore, whatever landmarks will be used to decide what is good or not for local people, who, most of the time, cannot resist the power of outsiders, modernity must not be a fatality related to dominant thinking, but a choice made by locally educated people

   

  3.3. Lack of Respect

                Africa is challenged by the lack of respect from so-called civilized countries claiming such values as progress, freedom, or equality, even though most of the time these resolutions are neither questioned nor respected by those promoting them. Lewis’s point of view demonstrates a lack of respect regarding dominated minorities[20], which highlights the problem of how to account for privilege[21] to reach an equilibrium between modernity (e.g., industry emergence), and the traditional ways of development for avoiding segregation (e.g., the development of the two sides that bordering the Great Kei River in South Africa). During trading activities, there is a lack of respect for the people’s interests and environment, which increases the gap that exists in developing trade (i.e., low bargaining power within trade negotiations) due to the asymmetry of knowledge and economic size of African countries with their partners’ dominant thinking and values (e.g., EEC, US or China).

   

  3.4. Developing Trade

                Africa’s growth without creating enough jobs to fulfill the growing needs of its age-working population. Whatever how trade is made (i.e., within or outside Africa’s borders), there is a need for setting strategic trade policies to reduce the negative side effects of such trade activities (e.g., slowing industrialization and structural transformation) while change in Africa is limited by a lack of sound industrial foundation to meet growing internal demand, resulting in a limited contribution of manufacturing to transformation. Thus, the link between trade and development like industrialization is not automatic[22] [23] [24]. The share of African exports in global merchandise exports is still slow. Services accounted for a small part of Africa’s total exports, far smaller than exports of raw commodities and natural resources while net import services (e.g., transports) continue to fuel the trade deficit for commercial services. Although agro-business markets are dominated by industrial giants, some promising initiatives have been taken (e.g., development and promotion of local regional agro-food chains)[25].

                Nevertheless, such initiatives are insufficient to boost the diversity of activities and reposition Africa in global value chains. Given that African countries depend on international markets for both inputs and outputs, trade policy instruments must be carefully selected to avoid negative policy lack of productive capacity, and infrastructure, and difficulty in complying with export market requirements, such as sanitary and phytosanitary norms, are trading problems to be overcome[26] while new economic challenges open the door to hope (e.g., e-commerce)[27]. 

   

         3.5.  Lack of Responsibility

  Today, the DDS is mainly the result of a lack of responsibility for human intelligence, which ranks competencies and categorizes environments by defining classes of economic power more or less related to quantities of money or of data controlled. Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world [28]. Nevertheless, inequalities in access to education and learning achievement are still the main barriers to achieving the EFA goals[29]. Poverty remains the major marker of disadvantage. A lot of population groups have been marginalized, including Indigenous populations and remote rural groups, street children, migrants, and nomads, including the disabled and linguistic or cultural minorities. There is a chronic lack of responsibility for providing timely, the right knowledge to people (e.g., youth), at the right place. Thus, whatever capitalism Africans are facing (i.e., industrial or financial), there is a lack of responsibility for managing international investment programs while funding local common goods, mainly because people are not aware of what such common goods are really.

   

           3.6.  Managing International Investments Programs

    More than to get money, Africa needs to modify its orientation while doing partnerships when selecting international investors (e.g., industrial capitalism vs financial capitalism) for development projects[30]. On one side, the agents of industrial capitalism are exposed to the risks and rewards of doing business. This is their culture. They make money, but the money they get is the result of an exchange in the real world. Who cares about the real benefit of such exchanges in Africa when landmarks for thinking about them are so different? On the other side, the only objective of financial capitalism is making money, never losing it. This is the culture of financial capitalism. Making profits over time continuously with low concern about development, while economic growth is a zero-sum game with a risk of inflation volatility[31]. Making profits with money or without playing with numbers that represent the scriptural money without any concern of creating risks of bubbles or crisis.

  More than having leaders, Africans must participate actively in contributing to their destiny, which must not be led only by interests that are often contrary to the real benefit for Africa itself[32]. For sure, Africa needs innovative financing to avoid illicit financial flows[33]. Nevertheless, the real problem is not only to know whether the African governments are facing licit or illicit financial flows for tax purposes including the State’s power attached, but concerns must be more about what people do with such flows, which puts us back to precedent problems’ examination (e.g, building infrastructure or developing trade). The chronic incapacity to define and implement general policies is embedded in a lack of managing Socially Responsible Investing (SRI)[34], while the incapacity to manage local interests slows down all human development in Africa.

  Does foreign aid really work[35]? Such a question must be answered by Africans themselves[36]. Once again, education is the key, not only to increasing the capability of Africans to negotiate but to awakening the consciousness of negotiators.

   

           3.7.  Lack of Knowledge

  We do not know yet what it means to understand (e.g., we are not yet able to manage automation of unstructured data or Big Data), we are still living within the illusion of being intelligent, and this lack of knowledge reinforces the Dominant-Dominated Syndrome. Despite many efforts, the impact of the current financial and economic crisis drove millions of people into poverty, but there is still a lack of timely delivery knowledge to people. Africa is challenged by the lack of adequate infrastructures, and provision of basic services for workers who migrate to the cities in search of jobs – pushing them into vulnerable low-quality employment[37], which demonstrates a lack of knowledge about what the real needs of the population are, including the key challenge of educational justice (i.e., the challenge of education).

   

               3.8   The challenge of education

            What do we know?

  Education is the key to modifying behaviors facing:

   

  • Inequality and Poverty
  • Health and Wealth threats
  • Demographic explosion
  • Climate change

  Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world[38], and the world as a whole claims that education is a key driver for promoting human development and lasting peace. Despite prizes awarded to people who are committed to such issues like the recent Nobel prize awarded to Malala Yousafzai, there is a chronic lack of responsibility for providing people with timely resources (e.g., youth), the right knowledge at the right place, and inequalities in access to education[39], and learning achievement are still the main barriers to achieving the EFA goals[40]:

   

  Goal 1: Expand early childhood care and education.

  Goal 2: Provide free and compulsory primary education for all.

  Goal 3: Promote learning and life skills for young people and  axdults.

  Goal 4: Increase adult literacy.

  Goal 5: Achieve gender parity.

  Goal 6: Improve the quality of education.

  Literacy and the quality of education remain among the most neglected of all education goals, with about 796 million adults lacking literacy skills today. Two-thirds are women. Millions of children are leaving school without having acquired the knowledge and skills they need to participate in society fully. In twenty-two countries, 30% or more of young adults have fewer than four years of education, and it rises to 50% or more in eleven sub-Saharan African countries[41].

   

        What has been done?

  In recent years, many countries have increased their education budgets, and international aid for education has risen. Ten years ago, an additional amount of US$16 billion was spent to provide basic education for all children, youth, and adults. At that time, 99 countries needed at least 1.9 million more teachers in classrooms than there were, seven years before, to provide quality primary education for all, and more than half of the additional teachers were needed in sub-Saharan Africa (1,056,000)[42]. Today, teachers are the key agents in improving the quality of education. Nevertheless, despite many efforts that have been made, the impact of the current financial and economic crisis drove millions of people into poverty, and there is a lack of knowledge of what can be done.

   

                  What could be done?

  Start by making education a priority. Along with abolishing school fees, one must build classrooms, introduce mother-tongue teaching, organize community campaigns, set up scholarships to encourage girls’ schooling, and mobilize community and religious leaders around education. Where there’s a will, there’s a way that can applied to governments as well as individuals.

   

        Actions Needed

   

  • Redress inequalities in education across all six EFA goals.

   

  • Expand non-formal education to provide educational opportunities to those who drop out or never had access to education with more or less AI embedded for developing AI leadership capacity in Africa[43].
  • Improve educational quality, notably through teachers (training, deployment, recruitment, etc.), better learning environment (e.g. learning and teaching materials, school infrastructure, etc.), and relevant curriculum.
  • Increase funding for education (increase national spending on education + aid disbursements), improve the delivery of aid, and develop innovative financing modalities to mobilize additional resources.
  • Enhance linkages between education and other development areas (health, nutrition, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, etc.).
  • Foster increased dialog and collaboration between national governments, civil society organizations, and the private sector.
  • Raise the profile of education on the global policy agenda through increased and wide advocacy.

   

  Despite such a list of good intentions[44], nobody knows how to succeed on the field for new organizing[45], particularly when Des-institutionalization occurs[46].

   

                  What we don’t know yet?

  How to implement 24 hours a program on the field. How to manage diversity and complexity (i.e., how does intelligence work)? Poverty remains the major marker of disadvantage. A lot of population groups have been marginalized, including Indigenous populations and remote rural groups, street children, migrants, and nomads, including the disabled, and linguistic or cultural minorities. How to implement on the field on a day-to-day basis policies across people living in various areas, speaking different languages while they share a diversity of social capital (e.g., rituals and beliefs)? How to create a democratic environment through tribes and communities of practices (CoP) while such a democratic environment based on respect for diversity and dialog can individual self-expression and self-government be secured only, and freedom of association is upheld[47].

  Thus, facing such diversity and complexity of people, new approaches must be tailor-made for sharing knowledge with such groups[48] [49], because simply increasing opportunities for standard schooling is not enough to remove barriers to education.

   

  4. Proof of Diagnosis

   

  A question essential to diagnosis is how many causes are sufficient? Generally, more causes lead to a more comprehensive analysis. However, the proliferation of causes leads quickly to confusion.

  Whatever the number of causes that are defined, the study should focus on the causes that have the greatest influence or impact on the problem[50]. In this case, the causes that have been mentioned are not restricted to Africans but also need to be addressed by non-Africans while putting in perspective one superior goal to achieve, which is to build a better world. Then, we can define a conceptual framework based on how to manage Organizational Change (e.g., TMB) and Organizational Justice, while the DDS occurs, including relying on the cause evidence and the action plan as described in the following table:

   

  Table 1 : Proof of Diagnosis

   

  Cause	Evidence	Action plan / Ideas
  Lack of Care	Inability or unwillingness to manage real interests of people.	Learn to consider others than oneself as unique, and increase the ability to get people involved in defining the priorities of policies while managing the diversities of interests.
  Lack of Respect	Ignoring what people involved are saying, and really want.	Learn to build mutual understanding (e.g., managing complexity), and in the context of Africa, increase the ability to define and manage the right balance between modernity and tradition.
  Lack of Responsibility	Incapacity to define and to implement general policies while managing local interests.	Learn to delivery plans and to organize the means timely at the right place to the right people with care and respect.
  Lack of Knowledge	Difficulty to manage common goods while taking in account local knowledge.	Learn to develop interactive learning (i.e., to give and receive), and increase the ability to enhance responsibility while managing change and justice.

  The above diagnosis is based on cause-and-effect analysis, which relies on causal frameworks appropriate to the problem. Such frameworks allow one to make statements among specialized methods – business frameworks, theories, and formulas[51]. Therefore, the next chapter is devoted to pointing out one academic business framework (i.e., Organizational Change and Organizational Justice) and an innovative methodology based on a paradigm shift introduced by the author (i.e., Managing by Love)[52].

  5. Concepts and Frameworks

   

  5.1. Organizational Justice and Organizational Change

  Justice’s perceptions of people regarding what is modern or what is traditional are variable. Therefore, there is a need to examine more in-depth some issues about change management that are not yet very well understood. A sample problem is about how to manage organizational change and organizational justice while multiple landmarks and interests interact[53]. No academic research has been done yet for a better understanding of how to manage development under the constraint of landmarks and contradictory interests of people involved in a process of change. Such a lack of knowledge must be reduced, even if some paradigm shift that contests dominant thinking has to be made. Beyond this theoretical issue, in practice, some traditional problems remain, particularly on how to manage within traditional societies (e.g., top-down or bottom-up) while risks are attached to the choices that are made by people more or less inspired[54].

  Top-down management

  • The risk of leadership can be mitigated by applying the rights and duties of man.

   

  • The risk of misunderstanding can be mitigated by having a clear vision that develops when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens[55].

  Bottom-up management

  • The risk of a democratic bi-polarization can be mitigated by promoting alternated hierarchies.
  • The risk of agency and oppositional identity[56] can be mitigated by developing personalized education.

                  Whatever the model of governance chosen by the African countries[57], for writing the success stories of the future[58], a moral revolution built in a paradigm shift is needed (e.g., economics & ethics) for both Africans and non-Africans[59] to get a better understanding of multicultural environments, which is imperative to succeed while managing change and justice. Therefore, delivering differentiated treatments while having in mind care, respect responsibility and knowledge (i.e., rational love) is a new paradigm[60] that can substitute the Dominant-Dominated Syndrome to escape from modern slavery[61] while paving a new way of interactive learning and particularly distant learning to reduce the potential ego conflict (PEC) that occurs during the traditional course as explained hereafter.

   

                  5.2. The Potential Ego Conflict (PEC)

  The future of education must enhance willingness to learn at any time, anywhere, while improving interactivity (i.e., ability to promote two-way real-time communication among users) and predictability (i.e., ability to anticipate the needs of participants). In order to achieve such results and strengthen educational justice, the experience of learning amongst participants must be built according to a mutual understanding of learning needs and teaching deliveries. Nevertheless, these two functionality (i.e., predictability and interactivity), which are key factors in improving the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) of any learner using computers, are not enough to pave the way for m-learning[62]. Therefore, one of the key factors to succeed in teaching is to reduce the potential ego conflict (PEC) between student and teacher during the necessary iterative dialog that participants need to establish during the process of learning.

  The PEC relates to the gap between the students’ expectations, and the teaching delivery provided by teachers. When students and teachers are engaged in a face-to-face or distance learning process—whatever the dialog inertia (e.g., due to the use of computers)—there is a need to install among participants an interactive both synchronous or asynchronous communication for managing dialog according to the needs of learners first while enhancing understanding of teachers to what needs to be taught. Constant adjustments must be made according to the critical thinking of participants. Such constraints are not easy to manage by the teachers in real-time, whatever the quality of their teaching. Then, there is often a potential conflict[63], and a “gap” between the student’s learning expectation and the teaching deliveries provided by the teacher, which gap is most of the time embedded into a PEC that reduces the quality of the learning experience, whatever the participants and their ability to manage critical thinking. Thus, from the author’s perspective, the quality of the learning experience depends on the PEC and becomes optimum when the PEC is minimal.

  From the author’s perspective, instructional designers play a central role in reducing such “gap” by providing educational conditions to enhance the learning experience embedded in a mutual understanding between learners and teachers, particularly when distant online computers are used for teaching. Understanding as a concept is an indefeasible link between teachers and learners. Moreover, during any course, the ongoing assessment of the level of understanding between participants is a key factor that helps teachers teach at best while providing learners with interactive means to assess the quality of their learning. Therefore, any learning process using computers off or online posits the central question of how to manage meanings conveyed by participants, which constitute their critical thinking, and alternatively opens the controversial debate about smart machines again.

  Today, the only way to increase critical thinking for learners and teachers during a learning experience using online computers is to construct mutual understanding through direct communication among them. No computers to date can substitute a human being for building meanings. Understanding is not yet a function managed by computers. In other words, critical thinking within a computer doesn’t exist. A computer is not able to decide alone about the validity of the information. Just to do that, one needs at least to understand the meaning of that information. Therefore, educational systems using computers in general, and particularly for building online learning systems, need to take benefit of new tools capable of digging in real -time what information is reliable or not among a huge amount of data sources at their disposal. Unfortunately, such new tools must be able to manage the meanings of data as human beings are used to. Nevertheless, to achieve such automation, one must first solve the problems of Natural Language Processing (NLP).

  As experts know, for solving NLP’s problems, it is necessary not only to structure the form of the message but also its meaning. What to extract is the meaning that is independent of the form, and this extraction becomes valid only if the message has been correctly interpreted, syntactically, of course, but also according to elements of context, which are specific to both issuers and receivers. Thus, the challenge of NLP is to model meanings, which can’t be done without responding to the following question: what does it mean to understand? In other words, to make a computer smart, i.e., capable of managing meanings, one must be able first to define the function of understanding, which is still a grand challenge for human beings.

   

                  5.3. A paradigm shift – Promoting Rational Love

  The Knowledge order is still at an infancy age until one day, computers become able to manage unstructured data with no false positives (i.e., able to manage meanings of words in context). In that case, the biggest impact will be to reduce the asymmetry of information while providing, in the same way, new light on how some complexity of human knowledge can be eliminated. Moreover, the principle of hierarchy, which is so present in human organizations, must be reviewed. Another major outcome is related to the concept of uniqueness defined by the fact that whatever element you may consider, there is no other element equal to it. Equality, which is a useful human theoretical convention, is in the real world always false[64].

  Beyond, one can consider that because each element is unique, it is a part of something bigger, which forms a unity. In addition, because each element is unique, we must take care of it, precisely because it is unique. Such duty of “care” corresponds to the first of the four elements mentioned by Fromm in 1956[65], placing “The Art of Loving” as a central issue of management for the future. Considering “Love” more as an interpersonal creative capacity of verbal intelligence rather than emotional intelligence, Fromm completed his definition by adding three other common elements, which are: responsibility, respect, and knowledge, which form a set of 4 elements to define Rational Love[66].

  Thus, promoting Rational Love (i.e., care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge) while delivering differentiated treatments (i.e., Managing by Love) is a new paradigm that can substitute Dominant-Dominated Syndrome to escape from modern slavery[67] [68]. Then, intellectuals and political leaders must rethink their ends, ways, and means, specifically for the management of common goods for re-constructing organizations[69] or decoupling means and ends[70]. New dialogs will be invented to increase the willingness to act within mutual and dynamic interest for going beyond current contradictions (e.g., progress vs conservatism)[71] while keeping in mind that there is no future without forgiveness[72].

   

  6. Action plan

   

  The task of the action plan for a problem essay is to improve situations involving poor performance, sustain those involving high performance, or both[73]. Therefore, the action plan in this case seeks to improve the management of change and Organizational Justice with the aim of better managing TMB within a multicultural population. To achieve that goal, a paradigm shift is necessary to reduce and progressively substitute the DDS.

   

                  6.1. Goals and Rationales

  Writing steps to cover the entire diagnosis is probably the biggest challenge of an action plan for a problem situation. A solution approach to this challenge is to make a list of rationales that could be linked to each step. In this case, as a global response to the problem situation, the author has identified rationales as follows:

  • Promoting the Bottom-up model of management as a policy development for valuing local knowledge while promoting alternated hierarchies.

  Rationale: Learn to consider others than oneself as unique, and increase the ability to get people involved in defining the priorities of policies while managing the diversities of interests.

  • Disseminating a universal communication methodology for common-sense building while promoting care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge.

  Rationale: Learn to build mutual understanding (e.g., managing complexity), and in the context of Africa, increase the ability to define and manage the right balance between modernity and tradition.

  • Increasing ability to implement policy and plans on a day-to-day basis, whatever the place or social capital shared by people involved.

  Rationale: Learn to deliver plans and organize means timely at the right place to the right people with care and respect.

  • Using Distant Learning (DL) while reducing the potential ego conflict (PEC), helps disseminate Personalized Interactive Learning (PIL) practices.

  Rationale: Learn to develop interactive learning (i.e., to give is to receive), and increase the ability to enhance responsibility when managing change while promoting justice.

                  6.2. Recommendations

  To improve the management of Organizational change and Organizational justice, and to better manage TMB within a multicultural population, a paradigm shift is necessary to reduce and progressively substitute the DDS while there is a need to enhance traditional education by developing PIL practices to benefit distance learning for improving traditional education as described hereafter:

  Why and how Interactive & Distance Learning (IDL) should improve traditional education?

  • Opening access to all Human Knowledge (HK)
  • Succeeding Multicultural Teaching (MT)
  • Working 24 hours a day at the speed of light (e.g., e-learning)

  What will be the long-term competitive advantages of IDL?

  • • Individually, by providing flexibilit
    •  growing human knowledge & reducing cultural barriers.

                 

   

6.3. Agenda of action steps

Step 1: The UN’s General Secretary signs a general agreement to fund a research program to develop new IT tools capable of promoting individual, and collective: care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge, with the aim to act as a master franchisor for promoting worldwide such of innovation to African States.

Step 2: The United Nations has benefited from the uses of these tools (i.e., feedback uses) while getting a better understanding of why the best way to strengthen worldwide human development growth is to provide dedicated IT tools for promoting individually, and collectively: care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge.

Step 3: Most countries in Africa and beyond have subscribed to a franchise license from the UN to boost their development and transformation capability on the basis of 10% payback from the economy done using such IT tools.

Step 4: Personalized Interactive Education (PIL) tools can be delivered by the UN in Africa and elsewhere in the world, free of charge to the poorest children, whatever their origins, races, or genders.

                  7. Conclusion

                  Problem situations in a case study are outcomes of the results of actions, processes, activities, or forces that we don’t fully understand, and problems often fall between the poles of success and failure[1]. Improving traditional education by introducing Personalized Interactive-Learning (PIL) based on a paradigm shift that promotes; care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge, is a difficult and probably intriguing interpretative of Africa rising to increase individual intelligence[2] and to awaken the consciousness of people having an interest in World’s development, particularly inside intergovernmental organizations which have to play an important role in promoting best practices for managing organizational justice and organizational change.

                Regarding educational justice, Ruck, Mistry & Flanagan (2019)[3] point out that there is a need in developmental psychology to advance theoretical and empirical knowledge based on children’s and adolescents’ perceptions, experiences, and reasoning about economic inequality, with attention to the processes by which inequality affects developmental outcomes. The gap that youth perceive between the ideal and real levels of inequality in their society has political implications, which are bigger within an unfair society, particularly whether the government is unresponsive. Understanding how young people learn about inequality helps in making social change. Therefore, embedded into an instructional design framework, promoting Rational Love while disseminating PIL should be a useful guideline for teaching young people how to deal with inequalities and justice theories[4].

                Moreover, the paradigm shift that sustains such transformation could lead Africa to perform a radical transformation (i.e., making such strategy hot)[5] highlighted by the following SWOT analysis:

S  Africa is probably the motherland of humankind. Therefore, the right and the duty of Africans are to show another development road for human beings, by promoting universal ideals (e.g., care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge) for enhancing fraternity worldwide.

W  Africans must be confident in themselves, their cultures, their practices, and their choices. The fact that today most people consider Africa as an undeveloped continent is only a weakness that appears in the current paradigm on the way to thinking about the development of the world.

O  Not only, the success of Africans will save Africa, but it helps other peoples on the earth to reconcile themselves with nature for a better understanding of what the duties of human beings must be vis-a-vis all living creatures.

T  If Africa and the Africans fail to rise, then the world as a whole will lose an opportunity to change its development model of justice (e.g., educational justice), which currently leads to a deadlock that must be broken by intergovernmental organizations.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

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• [1] Maathai, W. M. (2009). The challenge for Africa: A new vision. William Heinemann.
• [2] JICA (2013). Development Challenges in Africa Towards 2050.

[3]      World Bank (2015). Africa’s pulse, an analysis of issues shaping Africa’s economic future. Volume 11.

[4]      WHO (2014). The health of the people: What’s works, the African health report 2014. Who Regional Office for Africa.

[5]      United Nations (2015a). Education for All (EFA).

[6]      United Nations (2015b). Education for All (EFA).

• [7] United Nations (2015c). Innovating financing for the transformation of Africa. Economic Commission of Africa, 104–105.
• [8] Quadir, F. (2013). Rising donors and the new narrative of “South-South” cooperation: What prospects for changing the landscape of development assistance programs? Third World Quarterly, 34(2), 321–338.
• [9] Crane, A. (2013). Modern slavery as a management practice: Exploring the conditions and capabilities of human exploitation. Academy of Management Review, 38(1), 49–69.
• [10] Grodal, S., Gotsopoulos, A., & Suarez, F. F. (2015). The coevolution of technologies and categories during industry emergence. Academy of Management Review, 40(3), 423–445.
• [11] Bhatia, S. (2014). Confirmatory search and asymmetric dominance. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 27, 468–476.
• [12] Lutuli, A. (1960). Nobel lecture. Oslo.
• [13] Lewis, W.A. (1954). Economic development with unlimited supplies of labor. Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, 22, 139–91.
• [14] Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2013). Why Nations fail: The origin of power, prosperity, and poverty. Profile Books Ltd.
• [15] Ellet, W. (2007). The case study handbook: How to read, discuss and write persuasively about cases. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Publishing, p. 121.
• [16] United Nations (2015d). Economic Report on Africa 2015: Industrializing through trade. Economic Commission of Africa, p. 66.
• [17] Schmidt, J., & Keil, T. (2013). What makes a resource valuable? Identifying the drivers of firm-idiosyncratic resource value. Academy of Management Review, 38(2), 206–228.
• [18] Alexy, O., George, G., & Salter, A. J. (2013). Cui Bono? The selective revealing of knowledge and its implications for innovative activity. Academy of Management Review, 38(2), 270–291.

[19]     Ahuja, G., Lampert, C. M., & Novelli, E. (2013). The second face of appropriability: Generative appropriability and its determinants. Academy of Management Review, 38(2), 248–269.

• [20] Lewis, W. A. (1954). Economic development with unlimited supplies of labor. Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, 22, 139–91.
• [21] Young, J. (2010). Migration, ethnicity, and privilege: An exploration of representation and accountability. Syst Pract Action Res, 23, 101–113.
• [22] Stiglitz, J. E., & Charlton, A. (2006). Fair trade for all: How trade can promote development? Oxford University Press.
• [23] Clive, G. (2010). The truth about trade. Zed Books.
• [24] , 16, p. 170.
• [25] , 16, p. 105.
• [26] , 16, p. 146.
• [27] , 16, p. 43.
• [28] Mandela, N. (2003). Lighting your way to a better future. Planetarium, University of the Witwatersrand. Johannesburg. Retrieved from http://www.mindset.co.za/
• [29] , 5.
• [30] UNDP (2014). Impact investing in Africa: Trends, constraints, and opportunities. Working Document.
• [31] Sethi, S. (2015). Inflation, inflation volatility, and economic growth: The case of India. The IUP Journal of Applied Economics, 14(3), 25–43.
• [32] Economic Commission for Africa (2015). Innovative financing for the economic transformation of Africa. Addis Ababa, p. 113.
• [33] Economic Commission for Africa (2014). Progress report of the high-level panel on illicit financial flows from Africa. Addis Ababa.
• [34] Viviers, S., & Eccles, N. S. (2012). 35 years of socially responsible investing (SRI) research – General trends over time. South African Journal of Business Management, 43(4).
• [35] Riddell, R. (2007). Does foreign aid really work? Oxford University Press.

[36]     Dambisa, M. (2009). Dead aid: Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa. Allen Lane.

• [37] , 35, p. 66.
• [38] , 28.

[39]     Watkins, K. (2013). Too little access, not enough learning: Africa’s twin’s deficit in learning. Washington DC: Brookings Institute.

[40]     Ibid., 5.

[41]     Ibid.

[42]     Ibid., 6.

[43]     Anderson, V. (2025). Exploring the Role of Education, Training, and Mentor ship Programs. IRPJ. Euclid.

[44]     Ibid., 6.

• [45] Puranam, P., Alexy, O., & Reitzig, M. (2014). “What’s New About New Forms of Organizing? Academy of Management Review, 39(2), pp. 162–180.
• [46] Clemente, M., & Roulet, T. J. (2015). Public opinion as a source of des-institutionalization: A spiral of silence approach. Academy of Management Review, 40(1), 96–114.
• [47] Annan, K. (2001). Nobel lecture. Oslo.

[48]     Ibid., 36, p. 53.

• [49] Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Majchrzak, A. (2016). Interactive self-regulatory theory for sharing and protecting inter-organizational collaboration. Academy of Management Review, 41(1), 9–27.
• [50] Ellet, W. (2007). The case study handbook: How to read, discuss and write persuasively about cases. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Publishing.Ibid., pp. 52-53.

[51]     Ibid., 8, p. 121.

• [52] David, D. A. (2021). Organizational Justice and Organizational Change. New York: Routledge, p. 65.
• [53] Scott, B. A., Garza, A. S., Conlon, D. E., & Kim, Y. J. (2014). Why do managers act fairly in the first place? A Daily investigation of “Hot” and “Cold” motives and discretion. Academy of Management Journal, 57(6), 1571–1591.

[54]     Smits, S. J., & Bowden, D. E. (2015). A perspective on leading and managing organizational change. Economic and Business Review, 1(15), 3–21.

• [55] Jung, C. G. (1963). Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy. (2nd ed.). Collected Works of C. G. Jung, London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-09115-2.
• [56] Battu, H., & Zenou, Y. (2010). Oppositional identities and employment for ethnic minorities: Evidence from England. The Economic Journal, 120, 52–71.
• [57] Tissi, N., & Clerx, F. A. (2014). The road ahead for the African governance architecture: An overview of current challenges and possible solutions. South African Institute of International Affairs (SAAIIA). Occasional Paper number, 174.
• [58] Akers, M., & Porter, G. (2003). Your EQ skills: Got it takes? Journal of Accountancy, 195, 65–70.
• [59] Fehr, R., Yam, K. C. & Dang, C. (2015). Moralized leadership: The construction and consequences of ethical leader perceptions. Academy of Management Review, 40(2), 182–209.

[60]     Ibid., 52, p. 66.

[61]     Ibid., 11.

• [62] Bezhovski, Z., & Poorani, S. (2016). The Evolution of E-Learning and New Trends. Information and Knowledge Management, 6(3), 50–57.
• [63] Lupton-Smith, H. S. (1996). The Effects of a Peer Mediation Training Program on High School and Elementary School Students. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 57(2-A) 0589.

[64]     Ibid., 52, p. 33.

• [65] Fromm, E. (1956, éd. 2006). The Art of Loving. Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition.

[66]     Ibid., 52, p. 33.

[67]     Ibid., 10.

[68]     Ibid., 52, p. 69.

• [69] Christensen, L. T., Morsing, M., & Thyssen, O. (2013). CSR as aspirational talk. Organization Studies, 20, 372–393.
• [70] Haack, P., & Schoeneborn, D. (2014). Dialogue. Academy of Management Review, 40(2), 307–313.
• [71] Gray, B., Purdy, J. M., & Ansari S. (2015). From interactions to institutions: Micro processes of framing and mechanisms for the structuring of institutional fields. Academy of Management Review, 40(1), 115–143.
• [72] Tutu, D. (1999). No Future without Forgiveness. ISBN 978-0-385-49689-6

[73]     Ibid., 50, p. 125.

[74]     Ibid.

• [75] Soumyaja, D., Kamalanabhan, T. J., & Bhattacharyya, S. (2011). Employee Readiness to Change and Individual Intelligence: The Facilitating Role of Process and Contextual factors. UBIT, 4(2), 85–92.
• [76] Ruck, M. D., Mistry, R. S., & Flanagan, C.A. (2019). Children’s and Adolescent’s understanding and experience of economic equality: An introduction to the special section. Development Psychology, 55(3), 449–56.

[77]     Ibid., 52, p. 67.

y of self-education while reducing the PEC.