UBUNTU A HUMANIST PHILOSOPHY

Ubuntu can be definded as humaneness (a pervasive spirit of caring and community, harmony and hospitality, respect and responsiveness) that individuals and groups display for one another. These basic values manifest the ways African people think and behave toward each other and everyone else they encounter, generally regarding a high degree of harmony and continuity throughout the system, therefore the importance of taking into account this humanist philosophy in nowadays multicultural companies.

Is very common for managers to be aware only for the workplace behavior, a fact that is important but that does not explain the whole majority of the things that happens in the workplace because this behavior is only the observable part of a lot of variables that influences an employee. The Ubuntu philosophy offers a wider view of these and can be very helpful to managers because it can help them to understand that the unobservable or latent variables (like the social attitudes that comes from the philosophical thought systems like Ubuntu) are the ones that influences the employee in a higher degree and therefore has to be taken into account if the company wants to optimize the productivity in no coercive or in non economic ways.

According to Mangaliso traditional management system are guided by misapplied economic assumptions about human nature, that self-interest is the ultimate determinant of behavior, and it is maximized when employees earn as much as possible from contributing as little as possible and that Ubuntu offers a managerial guide related to relationships with others, language, decision making, attitudes towards time, efficiency and leadership, giving no importance to economic issues. For an intelligent manager is important to set a middle ground between two theories because when a manager only thinks in economic variables miss regard the undeniable fact that their employees are humans and are affected for a lot of variables that are not only economical, but if the manager only thinks in the Ubuntu way would fall in a unrealistic perception of the forces that drive nowadays system; the economical and market forces, so in other words will be an utopian way to manage a company.

Finally is important for cross-cultural managers to take into account humanistic philosophies like Ubuntu but is more important to take into account that they have to collect from them only the proactive elements, the ones that helps the manager to build a great organizational culture that would boost the company in both economical and human variables.