Management of Social Capital in Organisations Operating in Distressed Economies: A Zimbabwean Perspective

Abstract

The topic of this research study is "Management of Social Capital in Organizations Operating in Distressed Economies: A Zimbabwean Perspective”. The study site is Greater Harare, in Zimbabwe, a country in distress and an extreme operating environment for the employee. The research takes place against a background whereby the City of Harare has suffered employee exodus reaching almost 10% every year. This is despite diligent even frantic efforts to motivate employees with good remuneration, making the exodus rather confusing. The study focuses on social capital which translates employee trust within the context of the formal organization using the case study of City of Harare. The objectives of the study are: (i) to describe key issues in building employee social capital (trust) as a solution to labor migration

(ii)   To describe leadership and the operating environments   (iii) To describe the factors that influence staff retention and mobility  (iv) To determine how leadership can build the trust of employees in extreme operating environments in an effort to reduce their high levels of migration to other countries. The literature of the study derived from mainly leadership issues and social capital itself. Key studies were picked up from research that took place as far as the 1980s to the most contemporary scholars incorporating Francis Fukuyama whose seminal work on trust called Trust made a global ramification. This was pursuant to an earlier study called Making Democracy Work whereby social capital was cited as the key for creating trust and democratic consensus. The study was carried out using an interpretivist philosophical approach and a qualitative research design. The data collection instruments were the open ended unstructured interview, participant observation and document analysis. The results showed that the employees were particularly troubled despite the efforts by Council to provide them with adequate payment. It emerged that continued political intervention within the council and in general, as well as rampant corruption and poor service delivery caused deep seated losses in employee confidence. The most emphatic outcome of the research is that people are generally troubled by the entire system of government which has run down the entire economy leading to social decay. Even if Council employees are given sufficient financial resources for their work, it is not sufficient to motivate them to stay because beyond the organization, there are vast challenges which affect their way of life. The amount of institutional, economic and social decay is so deep rooted that the only chance at a decent life the employees have is to go abroad because the process of making remedies for the damage that has been done is not expected to be a simple task which can be solved in a short space of time. Furthermore the entrenchment of the ZANU PF government and the political culture of corruption and brazen institutional interference is quite deep rooted and may take generations to resolve. The environment includes a culture of impunity that is firmly entrenched in the operating environment that favours people closely aligned to those in leadership positions despite their ability to deliver;  that most leaders are involved in corrupt deals, violence and greed to access organizational resources and denying others in the process; that subsequently Zimbabwe is in a state of hopelessness, as companies close shop and employees turn to vending in second hand goods imported from foreign countries. The atmosphere of desperation is seen in social commentary like music and also newspapers. Thus it remains very difficult and in some cases to the point of being impossible to generate sufficient social capital (trust) required to retain the critical institutional memory important for the country's development. However, for the purposes of understanding the various scenarios of institutional trust, a model on building employee trust has been generated; the A-B Trust Repository-Displacement Framework which can be applied to manage loss of trust by leadership. The framework has been developed from the principles of reprocity ("Kandiro kanoenda kunobva kamwe”) derived from the Shona traditional management knowledge systems. This is expected to grow leaders with a high sense of responsibility for today and create hope for tomorrow.