African companies are generally portrayed in the literature as underperforming. As a result, a number of researchers have sought to identify the causes of these companies' poor performance. Two main theses are culturalism and institutionalism. The first incriminates the indiscriminate transfer of Western management methods to Africa and the damaging effects of African culture. The second is the weakness of African institutions. On the basis of interviews conducted with a number of employees of private companies in Kinshasa, our research shows that, in addition to the culturalist and institutionalist causes already mentioned in the literature, there are other causes linked to employees' social and working conditions that have a negative impact on the performance of African companies in general, and Congolese companies in particular.