Strategic responses to turbulence in Africa

Although environmental turbulence has long been studied, notions of market turbulence and technological turbulence, rather the socio-political context, have been central. In this chapter, we show that conceptualizations of turbulence can be extended to also explain turbulence in the wider external environment. We integrate the sometimes-contradictory literature into a process model, highlighting the proximal causes, the manifestations, and the proximal outcomes of turbulence. We then apply the model to two cases in Africa, a context where extreme conditions often help elucidate differences with extant thought, highlighting key elements that drove the turbulence firms experienced. Many elements are deeply intertwined and there are numerous feedback loops - to the extent that it is hard to make out causal chains. The complexity and dynamism of what firms were experiencing (and what they were trying to achieve) suggest the need for tools to make better sense of firm strategy under conditions of turbulence.