In this dissertation I investigate initial public offering prospectuses to examine institutionalized outcomes about risk and strategy and test whether information about those outcomes can be used to predict firm performance. I use three conceptual perspectives—managerial risk, New Institutional theory, and Organizational Cognition—to explore these outcomes in the main body of this thesis. The main body contains four articles that, although connected by a common thread, are designed as independent standalone papers. In Chapter 2 I examine the risk factor section of 529 prospectuses from firms that went public of US stock exchanges in 1995 and 1996. Using this data I create a comprehensive content cognitive map of 98 risk factors at represent the content of IPO field's risk knowledge structure. I then identify three methods for measuring these risk factors—pervasiveness, priority, and proportion. Following this I examine how the IPO field structures the risk knowledge structure. In Chapter 3 I use the content map developed in Chapter 2 to test whether I can use this information to predict firm performance. Using the IPO data, I develop several risk measures and compare these to existing proxy measures. I then use multiple regression analyses to test the reliability and validity of the various measures. The final result is a risk factor measure, the BROAD measure, which produced the most consistent results. In Chapter 4 I expand the investigation by examining'how firms and fields make sense of strategy and how it relates to the risk factors. In this chapter I compare three fields with differing" levels of institutionalization to see whether I can find unique institutionalized outcomes—industry recipes—about risk and strategy. In this Chapter I find strong support for the idea that fields have distinctive industry recipes. The results show that the dynamics of these industry recipes differ according to the level and type of institutionalization. Finally, in Chapter 5 I test firm level cognitive maps against the field level industry recipes to examine whether conformity, convergence, or divergence matter to IPO performance. There is some support for the idea that firm conformity to an industry recipe improves firm performance. Additionally, in some institutional conditions, convergence toward an industry recipe also improves IPO performance.

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration, Business Studies Unit, Durban University of Technology, 2008. / Telkom SA, over the last decade and a half, has undergone major change in terms of the manner in which it does business. From being a state-owned company to becoming a para-statal, to being run by foreigners and, finally, being run by local leaders within the company, Telkom SA has transformed as a company. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of change implementation on staff turnover in Telkom SA by reviewing the following key issues: The implementation of change within Telkom SA, benchmarked against international best practices; the communication of change/re-structuring initiatives by management in Telkom SA; the effect of change implementation on staff turnover; and the effect of change implementation on employee morale and retention. The rationale of this study is to allow Telkom SA management to review their current implementation strategy of change management initiatives in Telkom SA. Thereafter, it will provide guidelines for improvements in change implementation for the management of Telkom SA. Staff turnover and employee morale can negatively impact service delivery and financial performance of a company, so these recommendations are aimed at improving service delivery and financial performance. The study was descriptive, cross sectional and quantitative, involving the application of a questionnaire, via e-mail and personal interviews, with a sample of staff from the core planning section in the Network Infrastructure Provisioning division, where a high staff turnover rate existed. The questionnaire focused on assessing the impact of the implementation of change management processes on staff turnover at Telkom SA and was developed from the literature review. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 15 for both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that a significant percentage of respondents were v vi dissatisfied with the way management had handled issues related to change implementation, communication, turnover, morale and retention. With this in mind, recommendations on ways to reduce the impact of the key issues on the organisation were made. These included the recommendation of lean methodology in order to deal with the first three key issues, namely, implementation, communication, and turnover. Thereafter the ‘four cores of credibility’ model was recommended to improve employee morale. Finally recommendations were made on ways to improve employee retention. The overarching issue that has come to light is that although management is, to a degree, communicating change implementation, there is a noticeable lack of engagement with employees. The onus, therefore, lies with leadership to lift the levels of engagement with employees, thereby reducing the impact of change implementation on the organisation by increasing the level of transparency in the organisation. Improving communication would lead to improved trust, which would then result in improved employee morale, ultimately leading to a reduction in the staff turnover rate.

In this dissertation, we will use the term corporate strategy to describe the processes and practises engaged in to develop a sense of purpose, a set of actions and management plans that add value to the membership of the organisation. We will discuss the role of the non-profit organisation in the business sector, and locate professional associations within the spectrum of social enterprises and non-profit organisations. We will use the language of business models and non-profit models and practises to analyse the direction of professional associations in the global arena, and hope to identify patterns or trends in how these associations are managed in relation to typical business models. We will identify a framework to assist in thinking through the case study under investigation. One such professional association in South Africa will be considered more closely, and critically evaluated against these models. It should become clear that professional associations without a good, clear strategy and structure for managing short-term and long-term goals, has no hope for achieving these goals. It is hoped that on conclusion of this project, a model for strategic planning and implementation in professional associations, and specific recommendations for change for the association under consideration will emerge. / Thesis (MBA)- University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

This is a case study of an irrigated sugar cane Estate owned by the Company that mills sugar cane from the irrigated farms that make up the Estate and also from a wide range of other suppliers. The agricultural land on which the sugar cane is grown is threatened by divestiture in that the Mill could conceivably obtain supplies from other Private Growers and other contracted suppliers who are the potential purchasers of divested land. This is the problem that the research addresses. The case study addresses this problem by analysing the relationship between a specific sugar mill and its company owned Estate which supplies cane to the Mill, from irrigated sugar cane lands. In other cane growing areas Estate operations have been divested and the cane supplies outsourced to Private Growers. The case study evaluates this management strategy in the particular case of the Heatonville irrigation Estate supplying sugar cane to the Felixton sugar mill, both of which are owned by Tongaat-Hulett Sugar Limited. In 1993 the Company had vertically integrated backwards, and invested in agricultural land in a move to secure strategic cane supplies for the Felixton Mill. The Mill was at that time, and still is, under supplied with sugar cane on an annual basis. The case study provides a review of the relevant literature in the fields of vertical integration, divestiture and outsourcing which are concepts that can be related to the actions that the Company is taking in selling off significant potions of its agricultural land holdings. An overview of the concepts of marginal cost and marginal revenue are given in order to assist in the understanding of the relationship between the sugar mill and the Company owned Estate. The research design is guided by five main research questions around which the methodology and data collection processes are focused. These research questions are all related to the research problem. Computer generated budget models are used to evaluate financial and production information, with the assistance of tables and graphs. The specific relationship that the Estate has with the Mill in terms of its financial contribution towards milling revenues is also highlighted as a strategic benefit. A summary of results is presented by answering the specific research questions. The case study concludes that the Heatonville Miller Cum Planter irrigation operation provides strategic cane supplies to the Felixton Mill, which if outsourced to third parties may be at risk. The case study makes no attempt to generalise findings to other cane growing irrigation schemes. However where similar situations prevail management decisions could well be guided by the findings of this study, given the systematic application of the budget models in each situation. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

In the 1970's Kotter wrote an article, Why "Wasting" Time Is More Important Than Ever, in which he described the average manager's day. However, what he described, and what many management texts described was contrastingly different. Texts described highly structured processes whilst Kotter observed the opposite. The interesting insight after revisiting the article, he suggests in a more recent article, What Effective General Managers Really Do, is that he did not think of the word leadership to describe the process he observed. The article, and the more importantly, the language used to describe the process was a function of the era in which the article was written. Surprisingly this was also the period in which strategic planning in organisations was widely used. The language and the times that are characteristic to us today are complexity, discontinuities, uncertainty, rapid change and unpredictability. The 1970's was the era of strategic planning models, the 1980's strategic planning models failed to deliver and so we saw the rise of strategic management, and, in the 21 st century even strategic planning models fail to deal with the current realities so we have strategic leadership. Today we have the language of leadership to describe what most academics and consultants describe as a revolution. This dissertation hopes to build the beginning of a basis for a theory for strategic leadership. Most texts of strategy cover the conceptual models fairly explicitly. However, given that we are in a transition stage from one worldview to another, fundamental assumptions about how we organise, work and hence see the world are questioned and becoming invalid. This therefore calls for a rethinking of the fundamentals that underpin the process of strategy and the models embedded within the various processes. This dissertation highlights the critical concerns for strategy given that there is a shifting worldview. The dissertation covers the basic evolution of organisational design to current practices and thinking. Most importantly the basis for thinking about strategic processes, given that traditional models of organisational design and strategic management fail within the current context. The question for strategic management, is "what next?" • We know that we cannot predict the future. • We understand that there are limits to the speed of growth and more definitely for development. • We can see the limits of management but are still attempting to describe leadership and leadership practices. • We understand the need for the creation of new approaches for organising work in a global context. Such concerns and their relevance for organisational theory, particularly the lack of a general theory of strategy, has led this dissertation to focus primarily on three interrelated areas, viz. strategy, organisational design and systems thinking It was also important to draw on the current failures of strategy in order to inform a position on understanding strategic processes. This dissertation in no way hoped to resolve the above, but rather to begin a process of building new strategic frameworks. Another troubling problem of the strategy field is that there seems to be no deeper consideration given to the problem; that each school seems to further fragment the strategic processes and tends to divide, rather than create a synthesis. It is understood that defining the entire strategic field into one paradigm is not plausible. However, a deeper understanding of the fundamental assumptions that inform the different approaches to strategy will provide insight into the re-conceptualising of strategic processes rather than devising new strategic models. These processes of redefinition involves surfacing of assumptions so as to inform a synthesising (or convergent) process, which follows the divergent creative process. In the strategic field we have witnessed the creative strategic phase, and we now require a convergent approach in order to create new basis of knowledge for strategy. In essence, we need an improved understanding of the nature of the strategic processes rather than creating new tools and models. This requires understanding of complex relationships in interaction. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

This Q study revealed how dominant coalition members of an Indianapolis, Ind. —based non-profit organization approached and interpreted problems within a strategic management process — a necessary area to study in pubic relations considering the dearth of research of internal publics within the field.The same forty-eight statement Q sort was used in two time periods to track movement of communication behavior among members: a pre-sort before the process and a post-sort at the end.Using a public relations theory, the situational theory of publics, as a framework, the Q sort was aligned with the theory's dependent variables of active and passive communication behavior. The data from the completed Q sorts was then entered into the PQMethod software. Four factors were identified in the pre-sort, and two factors were identified in the post-sort.Findings indicate that the four pre-sort groups lacked consensus in their behavior on how to approach problems. However, the two post-sort groups exhibited a change in behavior, showing consistency in their interpretation of problems. In the context of this research, dominant coalition members can be segmented by their communication behavior, not just by their positions inside an organization. / Department of Journalism

The rationale for this study was the apparent difference between the marketing planning practices of Scottish SME's and the marketing planning practices recommended by management theory. The direction of this study was adaptedf rom two broad objectives: (i) To assess if , how, and why Scottish small and medium sized businesses go about strategic marketing planning; and (ii) To ascertain whether business performance is affected by participation in the marketing planning process. To address the research issues raised regarding marketing planning practice and its link with business performance, a conceptual framework that incorporated elements of the traditional strategic marketing planning process model suggested by the literature and also allowed for the marketing characteristics of SME's was developed. The research design involved a longitudinal survey of 626 Scottish SME's in 1990 and 183 of the same businesses in 1996. This study found that the incidence of marketing planning was significantly linked to business size supporting a number of authors who identify that business size has a direct influence on the nature of marketing and marketing planning practice. The research highlighted differences in the incidence of marketing planning across the three SME size categories. In assessing the planning-performance relationship 4 categories of SME's were defined according to their planning behaviour 1990-1996. These categories were Planners; Non-Planners; Embracers; and Disavowed. Analysis of these groups showed a significant positive relationship between planning and performance providing empirical support to case that marketing planning improves business performance.

In Singapore, employers lack a rational approach to decide whether a position should be externalized or internalized. Employers in Singapore put emphasis on short-term cost management and the minimization of overheads. However, maximizing organizational flexibility to the extreme may not be the best option for these firms in Singapore because they may lose control or even lose sight of core positions that are critical to a firm's success. To address the issue, a model can be developed, which will provide a rational approach to help a firm decide whether a position should be externalized or internalized. The rational approach will prevent firms from externalizing positions in an indiscriminate manner and hurting the firms' long term interests. Statistical analyses indicate that the majority of the hypotheses are supported. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2006.

Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2004.

Thesis (PhDBusinessAdministration)--University of South Australia, 2003.