Cultural Integration: Implications for business leadership and service productivity in sub-Sahara Africa: Cultural Integration in sub Sahara Africa

The paper explores the concept of cultural integration and its implications for business leadership in sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of business leaders working in the Nigerian financial industry. Semi-structured face to face interview was used to collect data from sixteen business leaders with a bicultural background working as heads of departments and groups of organisations in the Nigerian financial industry. The data gathered was analysed using Trans Positional Cognition Approach’ (TPCA), phenomenological research variant. The analysis yielded 12 participants themes and four second-level themes: promoting meritocracy-driven strategy, hard-headed approach to business operations, drivers of local organisational culture, and promotion of technological-driven service strategy. At a higher level of abstraction, these themes were interpreted as ‘conflicted organisational culture mental map syndrome’, an acculturation-enculturation dilemma directly attributable to business leadership practices by the study participants. Hence, cultural integration has significant implications for the studied research setting’s service productivity potentials.