Surviving in Africa: the response of multinational corporations to institutional deficiencies and their broader moral implications

Developing a lasting strategy to survive in the African business landscape would be incomplete without careful considerations of the role of culture and corruption in the region. This chapter aimed at understanding how multinationals operating in the Nigerian pharmaceutical landscape in the last fifty years have responded to corruption in the region. By conducting eleven in-depth interviews with managers from across different levels of two major American pharmaceutical multinationals, the research uncovered a dominant bureaucratic culture of compliance. From this culture emerged five different response strategies employed by these multinationals in responding to the institutional deficiencies in the region. This paper concludes by discussing the likely impact of these on employee moral capacities