Review of Vonk, A.; Freitas Silva, V. (2024) cultural confluence in organizational change: a Portuguese venture in Angola

Abstract

Journal of Economic and Management Studies

1

Book review

Alette Vonk, Vasco Freitas Silva, eds. Cultural Confluence in Organizational Change: A Portuguese Venture in Angola. Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2024. XIX, 159 pp. Euro 49.04. ISBN: 978-3-031- 45402-8. The book is the result of the shared insights and collaboration between Vasco Freitas Silva and Alette Vonk. Silva is a Chemical Engineer and Country Manager of a Portuguese engineering venture in Angola. Vonk was academically trained in Development Sociology and is currently a Dutch University Lecturer in Intercultural Management and a business consultant. Their manuscript is based on their research concerning the confluence of tradition and modernity within an organization in Angola. Interestingly, the Portuguese and Angolese cultures have long existed side by side in this southern African country. When the Portuguese came to Angola in the seventeenth century, they had to sign a peace treaty with the local Queen Njinga. Without the treaty, she would not allow the Portuguese to send their Catholic missionaries to her country. Remarkably, as Silva learned along the way, acknowledging the authority of an Angolese leader or Soba is still very necessary to establish a peaceful relationship with the locals in a modern venture in twenty-first-century Angola! As the authors put it: ‘Africa has two versions of everything’ and, henceforth, tradition and modern leadership correspondingly converge in the management world of postmodern Africa.