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This text describes a study of societal influences on innovation teams in organisations. The “story” is set in sub-Saharan Africa.

The research questions in the focus of this study concern explanatory relationships between three levels: the societal context, the organisational context, and the team operating within these contexts. This chapter should dispose of any ambiguity there may be concerning these terms and related concepts. It provides a common understanding for the text by defining terms and summarising the relevant knowledge, which this study builds on.

Drawing on literature from the areas of teamwork, organisational theory, international business, cross-cultural management, as well as African history, this Chapter develops a multi-level theory concerning the innovative performance of teams in sub- Saharan Africa.

After the previous chapters have laid the theoretical background and developed a theory of team level innovative performance in sub-Saharan Africa, this chapter introduces the empirical research approach. It explains why the case study method was used to test the theoretical model developed in Chapter 3, how the entire study was designed, and finally discusses the important issues of validation and ethics for this research project.

This chapter provides a summarised account of the journey that was undertaken into real life cases in order to gain a better understanding of organisations and teams in the sub-Saharan African setting. Three organisations were studied in Nigeria and one innovation team in each of these organisations was in the focus of this study.

The reader is now familiar with the five cases studied in Nigeria and South Africa. Chapter 5 has pointed out the characteristics of these cases and given an idea of the environment, within which they are set.

So far, five African case studies have been discussed and analysed. Juxtaposition of these cases with the theory developed in Chapter 3 has led to conclusions regarding the way societal forces in sub-Saharan Africa impact on organisations and their teams.

This research study strongly supports a view that was already brought up in the introductory section of this text, namely that organisations at every level are profoundly influenced by the societies in which they operate. 431 At the same time, the results of this study imply that managers can actively and consciously influence the way their organisations pass on societal forces to sub-units and individuals.