Executive summary. This article examines the relationship between wellbeing, culture, and collegiality within business schools, drawing on insights from a business school in Africa. It discusses the challenges of growth and the paradox of ambitions, emphasising how a school’s objectives can exert pressure on faculty and staff, potentially impacting organisational culture and employee wellbeing. It also examines how values such as solidarity, communalism, and Ubuntu—rooted in African traditions which support employee wellbeing—may be compromised in the pursuit of specific goals. Additionally, it recommends strategies and practices that business school leaders, as well as accrediting and ranking organisations, can adopt to strengthen collegiality and promote wellbeing at both individual and institutional levels.

Key takeaways

• Workplace culture and collegiality are central drivers of wellbeing in business schools, especially in contexts where values such as solidarity, mutual support, and collective responsibility shape how individuals experience belonging, trust, and psychological safety.
• However, institutional ambitions such as growth, accreditation, and rankings can create pressure that shifts behaviour towards competition and individual performance, weakening collaboration, increasing stress, and risking burnout if not carefully managed.
• Sustaining wellbeing requires deliberate leadership action, including rethinking evaluation criteria beyond publications, embedding collegial decision making, and introducing practical support measures, so that performance goals and human-centred values remain aligned rather than in conflict.

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Prologue 

I recall a faculty meeting at Lagos Business School during the early years of my deanship, where we discussed the need to increase research output and publish in higher-quality scholarly journals to improve our chances of obtaining a global accreditation. During this meeting, a faculty member who had joined the School a few years earlier from a different industry spoke up. Prior to this occasion, he often remarked on how refreshing it was to work in an environment where care and support for individuals were evident, and teamwork was encouraged, especially compared to the pressure and sometimes cutthroat competition in his previous sector. This time, he offered a note of caution, advising that the leadership of the School should give careful thought to pursuing global accreditations, as the increased expectations of faculty, which he termed “pressure”, coupled with higher teaching loads due to high growth, risked not only diluting the School’s organisational culture but also leading to faculty burnout. He concluded that this would “not be good for the health of both the faculty as well as the school.”

These words form the core of my reflection on the relationship between workplace culture, collegiality, and wellbeing in business schools, as I have often wondered whether pursuing lofty ambitions and fostering a high-performing culture conflicts with establishing an organisational culture that is supportive, collaborative, and collegial.

Influence of Culture in Business Schools in Africa

The curriculum in business schools is influenced by the needs of the societies in which they operate. Several business schools in Africa were founded in response to environmental opportunities, to fill gaps in managerial skills, or due to the absence of existing business schools, as well as to offer courses that improve the skills of managers and executives in their regions. Many of these schools aimed to ensure that managers developed the necessary skills to enhance their managerial competence, following the example set by other business schools, both locally and internationally.

For some of these institutions, their organisational culture and practices may have originated from specific values—cultural, Western, or indigenous. For others, traditional African values such as solidarity, communalism, collegiality, and care for others might have shaped their policies and practices.

The principle of solidarity, culturally ingrained and widely recognised in many African societies, fosters a sense of unity demonstrated through mutual support and care. Where solidarity exists in a business school, the purpose of the institution and those of the individuals who work there are aligned. This is also reflected in the organisational culture, where staff and students come together during challenging times and celebrate achievements.

There is cooperation and support for one another in both good and challenging times, stemming from African tradition, where neighbours, friends, and associates celebrate joys together and rally around each other in adverse situations. This extends to the workplace as colleagues are supported to thrive. There is a shared sense of inclusion, belonging, and concern for others as we collaborate to promote growth and success.

In a similar vein, the concept of Ubuntu, familiar to many and loosely translating to “I am who I am through you,” highlights the mutual dependence of individuals and, to some extent, communal responsibility. It suggests that a person thrives only with the support of others. As a result, there is a sense that everyone works together for the collective good, rather than adopting an individualistic outlook. From an African perspective, where decisions are often made collectively, collegiality can easily be embraced as a fundamental element of a business school’s governance and practices.

When practised, these concepts of solidarity, living through others and collegiality foster positive relationships, build trust, provide a sense of psychological safety, and promote the social wellbeing of not only individuals but also the institution.

Several studies on wellbeing support the idea that workplace culture significantly influences the wellbeing of faculty and staff. Daniels, Watson, and Gedikli (2017) found that structured activities, supportive colleagues, collegiality, and a generally positive social environment create a sense of safety and belonging, thereby boosting the wellbeing of academics. In such settings, where university conditions ensure individuals feel supported, both individuals and their institutions benefit. Tuch and Ngcobi (2018) in their study on how organisational culture affects workplace wellbeing in South African universities, concluded that culture has a notable impact on wellbeing. They observed that teamwork and collegiality offered staff support and a sense of psychological safety, even under pressure. Moreover, factors such as open communication, trust, mutual respect, and the alignment of employees’ values with those of the organisation all contributed to an increased sense of wellbeing.

At Lagos Business School, established in the early 1990s with a focus on nurturing competent and socially responsible leaders dedicated to transforming society, the School recognised the importance of fostering a culture where faculty members support each other throughout their academic careers. Practices such as assigning a “buddy” to newly appointed faculty members to help them understand School policies and procedures, show them the ropes, and assist them in settling in quickly. Additionally, mentoring is provided to new joiners for a period of one year. Typically, the mentor is an experienced faculty member who takes on a more formal role in helping the mentee develop as a young faculty member and guiding them on how to embody the School’s core values, understand the culture, and grasp the objectives of service in the community, as well as how to achieve these objectives. These initiatives, along with the practice of collegiality—a fundamental aspect of governance at Lagos Business School—help give faculty members a sense of belonging and encourage honest conversations and participation in decision-making.

Although these policies and practices of the School derive from the School’s values and beliefs, they mirror the values that guide behaviour in most African communities, which promote a sense of harmony and wellbeing among community members.

The Challenges of Growth and the Paradox

However, in the early 2000s, as the school began to expand and aimed to meet international standards through global accreditation, it faced a paradox as two seemingly conflicting objectives emerged. At the same time that it pursued international recognition to enhance its reputation as a leading business school by obtaining global accreditation, it also sought to strengthen its culture by emphasising its core values: Community, Respect, Integrity, a Spirit of Service, and Professionalism.

Its pursuit of global accreditation and desire to feature in top business school rankings required specific metrics and indicators, which exerted considerable pressure on faculty in various ways, including publishing more in highly ranked journals. While the objectives are not mutually exclusive, meeting these new expectations often demands significant individual effort from faculty, with high stakes. They had to succeed or face the risk of not being promoted, or worse, losing their positions as faculty members.

Unsurprisingly, as the promotion criteria evolved to include extra expectations, some faculty members reported feeling stressed, exhausted, and overwhelmed by the increased workload, all of which impacted their wellbeing. The result was that teamwork, collaboration, and supporting colleagues through mentoring or the buddy system were often overlooked, as the urgent need to ‘publish or perish’ and secure promotion took precedence.

The Toll of Success on Individual and Institutional Wellbeing

Although the pursuit of growth and recognition by the school was a strategic priority outlined in the School’s Strategic Plan with input from key stakeholders, it began to seem that achieving this key objective could alter staff behaviour and lead them to act in ways that contradicted the culture.

Achieving success in obtaining global accreditations led to increased demand for its programmes. Faculty, facing a heavier workload as demand outpaced the supply of qualified staff, often found themselves under significant pressure to meet these evolving demands. In the face of these pressures, it became clear that there was indeed a risk of losing some of the School’s core values as competition among faculty appeared to intensify.

To retain their positions at the School and achieve promotion, faculty members face pressure to publish, which may cause them to devote excessive time to research. This, in turn, affects their work-life balance, raises stress levels, and can be detrimental to their mental health. The institution itself could also be impacted, as these same factors influencing faculty may begin to weaken the organisational culture. It is therefore essential that the institution recognises these factors and implements support mechanisms and wellness programmes to help faculty manage these pressures.

For the School itself, the conflict I mentioned earlier may arise between striving for the institution’s success and its influence on the current organisational culture. It is clear that when individual faculty members’ goals and the reward system are misaligned with the School’s direction, the culture begins to decline.

In many schools across the developed world, recognising these realities, there is a deliberate effort to prioritise the wellbeing of staff and faculty. However, in less developed regions, the pressure to progress in an increasingly competitive sector—where schools must distinguish themselves to remain relevant and viable, compounded by financial pressures—sometimes reduces the focus on wellbeing. The African culture of “being your brother’s keeper,” which involves looking out for others in your community and helping one another by imbibing a “spirit of service,” diminishes under these pressures. Without intentional leadership, the culture could shift from being rooted in core values to one where only the most capable individuals succeed, regardless of the institution’s principles.

Leadership Practices that Enhance Wellbeing

Increasingly, business schools worldwide are deliberately emphasising the wellbeing of staff and students. The challenge, however, for business school leadership in some contexts is balancing the institution’s objectives without compromising the wellbeing of its faculty and staff. Addressing these challenges requires rethinking how the productivity of faculty members is evaluated, creating initiatives, and providing better support for overall wellbeing—mental, social, and physical. This includes ensuring the work environment is conducive and supportive, as well as implementing policies that help staff maintain a healthy work-life balance.

At Lagos Business School, staff and faculty are reminded of the core values through monthly talks in each department, with recognition given to individuals or departments that exemplify specific core values. Collegiality as a form of governance is enshrined and emphasised in the university’s constitution, and practised at every level from the topmost governing body to any department with more than four professionals.

However, following the realisation of how the organisational culture was being affected by the pressures of meeting the institution’s goals, deliberate steps were taken to promote the wellbeing of faculty. These included the following:

For individual faculty members:

• Intentional scheduling of teaching responsibilities to give faculty a 2-3-month period each year without teaching, providing time for research.
• Providing each faculty member with a research assistant as requested.
• Allowing flexible work hours so that faculty were not obliged to keep the same office hours as others, provided they held office hours at least twice a week.
• Holding faculty retreats and get-togethers at regular intervals to socialise and celebrate achievements.

Institutionally, the following were put in place:

• Holding leaders at every level responsible for ensuring decisions are made collegially, involving seeking input from stakeholders who would be affected by the decision.
• Clear communication of the school’s short-term and long-term goals and objectives to ensure clarity of purpose and alignment among all.
• Charge leaders with the responsibility to lead by example and embody the core values of Community, Respect, Integrity, a Spirit of Service, and Professionalism.
• Hosting regular talks and programmes on managing stress and other areas of wellbeing.

All of these were deliberately undertaken to shape the organisational culture.

Conclusion

There is increasing awareness of how workplace culture and faculty wellbeing foster greater collegiality among staff in business schools. However, the relationship between these three elements may seem complex and difficult to manage simultaneously due to various competing factors.

Creating an institutional culture in business schools where staff are mentored and feel supported, where there is more collaboration than competition, and where policies and practices are designed to promote staff wellbeing might seem idealistic, raising doubts about whether these can be realised.

The following could be considered as business school leaders work to promote the wellbeing of faculty and staff through culture and collegiality:

Individual

The perceived value of a business school professor should extend beyond publications in top journals to include other measures that recognise contributions in service, community engagement, mentoring young faculty and students, and recognising teaching excellence. This would help to reduce stress levels and enhance physical wellbeing.

Institutional

At the institutional level, implementing wellness programmes and providing enhanced mental health support — as many business schools do — helps foster a more supportive and conducive workplace. In some cases, limited funds and resources, especially in less developed countries, might prevent institutions from establishing comprehensive wellness programmes. However, such constraints should not lead to neglecting the wellbeing of faculty and staff, as their health is vital in helping the institution achieve its goals. There must be a purposeful and coordinated effort by business school leaders to foster a culture that incorporates elements of wellbeing, such as promoting inclusion, collaboration, and mentorship. Furthermore, when collegiality exists in governance, it helps create a positive work environment by encouraging employee participation in decision-making, making staff feel valued, and boosting their enthusiasm for working towards the common good.

Broader eco-system

On a broader level, recognising the importance of faculty and staff wellbeing and its contribution to the overall health of schools, stakeholders in the management and business education sector – including accreditation bodies, regulators, and ranking agencies – should consider incorporating aspects of wellbeing, collegiality, collaboration, and inclusion into their review and assessment of schools.

Achieving these goals, therefore, will depend on business school leaders gaining a better understanding of the relationship between these elements and deliberately institutionalising policies and structures that promote wellbeing.

A supportive and inclusive culture increases trust and confidence in the system. When staff feel that their wellbeing is prioritised and considered in decisions, they are more likely to collaborate and work towards the institution’s success rather than just their own individual success.

In several business schools across Africa, the culture is influenced by shared values, community building, collaboration, collective decision-making, and cooperation. Familiarity with these concepts from a practical perspective can help leaders guide the institution toward achieving greater staff satisfaction and engagement, as well as improve overall staff and faculty wellbeing.

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References

Daniels, K., Watson, D. and Gedikli, C. (2017) Wellbeing and the academic workplace. Higher Education, 74(3) pp. 441–455.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0069-4

Tuch and Ngcobo (2018) Workplace wellbeing and organisational culture in South African universities. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 28(3) pp. 232–239.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2018.1475502