Author Abstract
Through her efforts to recruit, hire and develop minority executives at MTN, a South African telecommunications company, [Irene] Charnley attempts to bring a gentler capitalism to post-apartheid South Africa. Like her other colleagues on the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Commission, Charnley believed that each black business executive had a responsibility to effect positive change in their particular company, and that through their collective efforts they could have a powerful collective impact on the country. By the time of the BEE Commission Charnley found herself at the top of the pyramid, but she had come from the bottom, growing up in Elsies River—an Afrikaans-speaking, Colored area outside of Cape Town. This paper begins with a description of the economic conditions in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, then details the BEE Commission, and finally narrates Charnley's story.
Paper Information
- Full Working Paper Text
- Working Paper Publication Date: June 2006
- HBS Working Paper Number: 06-057
- Faculty Unit(s): Organizational Behavior