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Measured against the gloomy pre-COVID-19 predictions, Africa has fared far better than most regions in managing the pandemic. This much, however, has received less attention. This paper answers the question: how have the new rituals of self determination in public health affected the successful management of COVID-19 in Africa, and how can the continent and the rest of the world build on such models/lessons in the post-pandemic era? I employ emancipatory theorising in reviewing literature on approaches to governance of COVID-19. The rationale is to empower the grassroots and to accentuate the urgency for a decolonized local ownership of the governance of all public health crises. I argue that while traditional international cooperation is necessary for additional resource and expertise from the global North for sustainable health, the political will of Southern governments remains fundamental for any extraordinary success due to its grassroots/community orientation towards non-pharmaceutical interventions and initial pre-emptive rituals. The novelty in this paper is that it lays bare the ignored African responses and lessons and reveals how to harness protective communitarian ethos in solving future crises. The paper further provides population health as an 'immune system' policy framework for explaining and predicting how a scientific and human-centrered grassroots leadership can yield optimal outcomes in any future crisis.

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore in depth the anatomy of post-truth in the quest to set a new research agenda. The author interrogates knowledge production/dissemination and the political positions of those behind them. This study diagnoses and challenges existing claims of supremacy of certain hegemonic epistemological and ontological orthodoxies that have been weaponized.


Design/methodology/approach
This study philosophically engages with different worlds of credible 'pluriversal' knowledge(s) and leads to the exposure of historically 'taken-for-granted' definitions of the nature and composition of acceptable truth and how it is deeply entrenched in interest group politics.


Findings
Each generation in different contexts has had to battle with specific troubling forces of deception and organized hypocrisy. Here, both new social actors and incumbents influence the disgruntled, deceive the gullible or connect with the enlightened masses at the emotional level whilst strongly undermining the rules-of-logic and fact-based discourses using disruptive social media technologies. The author specifies how the five P's: political power, profits, populism, politics and the private visions of technologists and scientists will continue to play very influential roles in how knowledge production will affect future policies and global governance.


Social implications
Based on historicized explanations, the author argues that deception and mass ignorance as weaponized features of global governance and its capitalist order are typical Machiavellian strategies for gaining control over knowledge production/information dissemination. Massive changes are not expected in the future unless society and academia introduce novel science, technology and political platforms for engaging society and policy-makers.


Originality/value
The author provides ample historical illustrations to support the claims made in this study that public insights into the postulated structures of post-truth remain extremely superficial, making people insufficiently informed to engage in crucial discourses about knowledge production and dissemination that affect their futures. This study provides several ingredients for stimulating further debate.

Purpose– This study aims to explain how sustainable global health presents an emerging new form of competition and socio-political and functional pressure for which strategic organizational renewal is a prerequisite for the organic resilience and co-evolution of pharmaceutical firms with their environment.Design/methodology/approach– Through a meta-theoretical analysis in which theories themselves become the unit of creative synthesis, a wider framework is developed to allow a comprehensive and nuanced reinterpretation of the neo-institutional theory and the resource-based view. In focus is the practical utility and relevance of such theories within emerging economies where pharmaceutical firms respond to market and institutional changes.Findings– The imperative for organizational change is very much dependent on the combination of ethically constrained managerial choices as well as entropic institutional pressures that allow firms to successfully adapt to their dynamic environment. This is achieved through legitimization and sustained competitive advantage, the results of innovation and contextually relevant differentiated value propositions.Social implications– Contrary to popular perceptions, recent developments demonstrate that the simultaneous pursuit of efficiency and ethical preferences is possible, irrespective of the institutional matrix within which change occurs. Managers should, therefore, tap into the niche opportunities offered by favorable entropic pressures.Originality/value– The novelty in this paper is the framework it provides for analyzing the massive role played by the micro-political power of managers and how the goals they pursue become fundamental to what the organization becomes as it coevolves with the turbulent era of emergent health needs.

Purpose– Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an issue-oriented substantive domain. Nevertheless, there are countless socio-economic, medico-techno-scientific, environmental and ethical philosophical questions that are far from being settled. In pursuit of a more desirable and sustainable future, this work problematizes current corporate responsibility (CR) research, education and practice.Design/methodology/approach– This contribution provides a critical perspective on the future of CR research and practice and offers a way forward based on theoretical prescience.Findings– The paper delineates a taxonomy of typical crises, categorized asburning, existential, overlookedandneglected crises. This taxonomy can be used as a tool for all forms of scenario analysis, empirical work and policymaking. This allows various futures issues to be given targeted interventions, assigned a focal theory, or allocated differentiated resources and appropriate time and space depending on their technical nature and the institutional context within which the issues unfold.Social implications– This paper argues that CR research risks losing steam despite its near ubiquitous nature and the major contributions hitherto made. Nevertheless, when problems are strategically thought out in the light of the taxonomy above, they provide promising avenues for insightful research and value-creating practice to meet the expectations of both business and society.Originality/value– A profound chasm exists between CR practice and rhetoric. This void is particularly stark when we consider the interface between science and technology and developing economies. This paper explores desirable futures for CR while analyzing what is possible and probable.

Purpose– This paper aims to answer two questions: How do technologies of governance explain how global governance is enacted? and What alternatives can be proposed for a sustainable future for the governed 7 billion?Design/methodology/approach– Using institutional theory and Galtung's (1971) structural theory of imperialism as critical theoretical frameworks, this paper confronts orthodox conception of global governance by offering transformative alternatives to inequality, a "historically situated urgency", which is the product of a faulty global governance system.Findings– Concrete, purposively sampled empirical illustrations on transnational corporations' resource control and how "flight capital" fleeces the poor to enrich the affluent are provided to aid understanding. This helps to explain how such secretive financial mechanisms perpetuate global inequality in health, education and general well-being.Social implications– The study introduces the concept of compressed spheres of global governance. It is theorized that diverse institutional logics provide clusters of governors in coopetition that affect individuals and communities of places and communities of interests differently.Originality/value– The novelty in this study is the concept of compressed spheres of global governance which explain how both visible and invisible systems shape all the worlds of the governors and the governed, as well as how they both interpret their lived experiences.