The research study focuses on the prejudices women encounter in both the church and society concerning the recognition of their leadership potential. Women’s leadership is largely defined by men in their cultural context. The church also imposes expectations on traditional African churchwomen, which seem contradictory to what the Word of God teaches. This condition is ironically supported by men who do not necessarily go to church because of their cultural convictions. Thus, the dissertation argues extensively that this untenable situation needs to be challenged. The study interacts with Biblical texts that are often subjected to erroneous interpretation drawn in support of oppressive cultural practises and used to militate against women leadership. The approach is not entirely subjective as it considers the perspectives of some renowned African theological writers, readers as well as women role models in exploring the extent of women’s burgeoning in leadership positions in the Assemblies of God (AoG) church in the O R Tambo district Eastern Cape, South Africa. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Theological Ethics)

The face of banking has changed dramatically over the last few decades, and in no area does this statement hold more true than in the domain of digitalization. One term that has been relentlessly repeated when discussing the past, present and future of this development is ”Digital Transformation”. Digital Transformation can be tersely defined to mean change driven by digital technologies, with the potential to increase efficiency in existing processes, as well as to allow for new and novel technology-driven problem solutions and business models. Despite the fact that Swedish major banks have come a long way in their digital transformation efforts, there is a lot of evidence that points towards this process not proceeding fast enough. This study is an effort to get a general overview of the main barriers and mechanisms that are causing this development to proceed at a slower rate than might otherwise be desired, and to investigate how actors within the Swedish banking sector are seeking to overcome said barriers. This is done primarily through the interviewing of key personnel within major Swedish universal banks. The majority of the interviews are conducted with employees from a single major Swedish universal bank, taking the form of a case study, while a smaller number of interviews are conducted with individuals associated with other banks, in an effort to provide increased generalizability. The results of the study show that barriers standing in the way of continued digital transformation in the Swedish banking sector can generally be categorized into one of the following categories: Legacy Infrastructure, Organizational Structure, Organizational Culture, Incentive Structure, Resource Insufficiency, Regulation, and Failure in Management. The solutions and models discussed to address these issues included API First approaches, change driven through Cross-Functional Teams, and Collaborative Strategy Formulation. / Hur bankverksamhet bedrivs har förändrats dramatiskt över de senaste årtiondena, och i inget område är detta lika tydligt som när det kommer till digitalisering. Ett begrepp som ständigt upprepas när man beskriver den forna, nutida och framtida utvecklingen av den här typen är ”Digital Transformation”. Digital Transformation kan kortfattat summeras till att betyda förändring driven av digital teknologi, med potential att öka effektiviteten i befintliga processer, samt möjliggöra för nya problemlösningar och affärsmodeller. Trots det faktum att de svenska storbankerna har kommit en lång väg i sina digitala transformationsinitiativ, så finns det mycket som tyder på att denna process ändå inte går tillräckligt snabbt frammåt. Den här studien är ett försök att få en generell överblick på de primära barriärerna och mekanismerna som orsakar att denna utveckling går långsammare än önskat, samt att undersöka hur aktörer inom den svenska banksektorn har för avsikt att bemöta dessa problem. Detta görs huvudsakligen genom intervjuer med nyckelpersonal inom de svenska storbankerna. Majoriteten av de intervjuade kommer från en enda bank, där en form av casestudie utförs, medan ett mindre antal intervjuer genomförs med individer tillhörande andra banker, i en ansats att ge ökad generaliserbarhet. Resultatet av studien visar att barriärer som står i vägen för fortsatt digital transformation i den svenska banksektorn kan generellt kategoriseras in i följande kategorier: Föråldrad Infrastruktur, Organisationsstruktur, Organisationskultur, Incitamentstruktur, Resursbrist, Regulation, och Misslyckanden i Styrning. De lösningar och modeller som diskuterats for att adressera dessa problem inkluderade API First-baserade tillvägagångssätt, förändring driven av tvärfunktionella arbetslag, samt kollaborativ strategiformulering.

Digital Transformation is changing the ICT industry and companies must act with speed to stay in the race. In order to be a credible business transformation partner, responding to industry changes and customer demands faster, companies today are transforming themselves and embarking on their digital journey and digitalization is high on every company’s agenda.   Most of these transformation initiatives fail or are progressing slowly and one major reason for this is organizational barriers to transformations. These barriers are challenging as organizations and employees react differently to change. Hence in this paper, I will study the transformation process and try to identify and understand the barriers and the most challenging stage of the transformation by interviewing eleven executives from across companies which are in various stages of their Digital Transformation journey. Even though significant number of barriers were identified in the Initiation and the Transition phases, the results indicate that each phase is equally important and is an outcome of the previous phase. By addressing barriers in the first two phases and taking concrete actions, the resistance can be reduced, and organizations can smoothly transition and transform ensuring that the organization and staff embrace the changes.   Several barriers to change and transformation were identified ‐ Unclear Company Vision and Goal of the Transformation; Top Management, Leaders and their Leadership style; Project group, Organizational set‐ up and Agility; Change and Middle managers lacking expertise; Lack of Rewards and Incentives; Unclear Measurement systems, Lack of HR involvement and a strong Learning culture missing.   In this work with executives working across a variety of industries, the findings suggest that by putting people first and by running change management programs with more people‐centric approaches can lead to dynamic results. The study revealed the need for top leaders and executives to present a united front, provide more autonomy, increase collaboration and transparency across project functions and structures. Middle managers and HR need to work together bettersupporting and coaching the employee’sindividual development plans, tracking changes, creating an atmosphere that engages and energizes employees and by rewarding or incentivizing employees ensure that the changed behaviours stick and quickly spread throughout the organization. Siloed organizational structures were further identified as making the organizations obsolete and the transformation journey must begin by putting together diverse project teams encompassing the right capabilities and skills with a clear driver of change.

The analytical solution to a model time-dependent continuous lethargy photon transport equation is evaluated numerically to obtain a benchmark solution using the Laplace transforms coupled with the multiple collision expansion method. The benchmark solution is then used to check the accuracy of the multigroup approximation. Excellent agreement between continuous lethargy benchmarks and multigroup approximation is obtained.

In the postmodern-day organisation, acknowledgement of the facts today is that the retail sector has changed dramatically over the past ten years. Boom periods, surplus shopping and good times have ended. We have entered an era of harsh changes, business collapse, mergers, acquisitions and turbulent competitive environments that demand a constant review of business structure, financial performance, business practices and value creation to provide any hope of the ability to trade sustainably into the future. Responsiveness by retailers in this modern day driven by market need changes causes an almost instantaneous response by retailers to adapt and service the consumer demand. Thus, in evaluation of the underlying reasons for retail market shifts, one starting with the basic premise and rule of the law of natural selection – adapt to the environment, or die. No doubt that customer demand and the competitive landscape dictate effective and quick response from retailers, driving the form, shape, volume and nature of change. Present day marketplace forces are generally forming a worldwide consumer marketplace that will appear dramatically different since 2010, pushing retailers to bring about fundamental improvements to their methods and business models in order to survive. Conventional campaigns will stop being sufficient to deal with trends which may drive the retail markets into the realm of extreme conditions. Retailers in South Africa, albeit not directly, are impacted by global shifts and changes. In an environment with increasing competition and the growing demands for operational efficiencies, sustained profits and customer orientation, SA retailers are looking beyond their traditional business models and organisational boundaries to develop and leverage the resources and capabilities of international best practice to create superior value and drive competitive advantages in the marketplace. Value-add in making things work better for customers, albeit through various business enhancement and improvement initiatives, the longer their relationship will endure with the company. Thus the potential of adopting a deliberate creativity approach within the broader strategic planning process of a company, might well be the value-add activity that provides the catalyst for closing the performance gap, through bridging and integrating the core concepts of creativity and applying these concepts within real business operations, with the explicit aim of improving business profitability. To this end, the study originated from a need for a creativity-driven approach to enhance business performance in a retail organisation and not only challenge current paradigms, but redefine furniture retailing and create new furniture retailing operating models. In so doing, using a deliberate creativity-driven approach, that will catapult furniture retail onto a new performance curve that ultimately creates shareholder value through an enhanced customer proposition. The researcher embarked on a journey to establish whether a structured deliberate creativity change management framework could improve a company’s competitiveness, effectiveness and profitability; and to what degree a creativity framework can be used to enhance performance within a company. The research study results and findings, together with the financial performance results revealed that the creativity interventions deployed did in fact enhance business performance (financial, cultural, productivity and organisational behaviour) over the specific study period. The study also includes the design of a Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Framework, Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Strategy, Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Implementation Plan and an Integrated Beyonder Scorecard, which can be applied to any type of retail business across numerous diverse disciplines. / PhD (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

It is a well-known fact that drugs can exist in different solid-state forms. These solid-state forms can be either crystalline or amorphous. Furthermore, significant differences are identified between the different solid-state forms of the same drug. Physico-chemical properties that are affected by the solid-state include: melting point, solubility, dissolution rate, stability, compressibility, processability, to name but a few. During the last two decades a significant amount of attention was directed towards the amorphous solid-state forms of drugs. The amorphous form is the direct opposite of the crystalline solid-state. While crystalline forms are constituted by unit cells arranged in a repetitive and structured nature, amorphous forms do not have a long-range order. This lack of order leads to an increase in the Gibbs free energy of such compounds which in turn leads to increased dissolution and solubility. The advantage of improved aqueous solubility and dissolution is a sought after characteristic within the pharmaceutical industry. Improved solubility ultimately could lead to improved bioavailability of a drug. In this study the amorphous nature and stability of amorphous azithromycin was studied. Although previous studies reported that amorphous azithromycin can be easily prepared, there is not a significant amount of data available on the stability of the amorphous form. Furthermore, the effect of milling, mixing, compression, handling and storage on the amorphous form was also investigated. This study showed that amorphous azithromycin remains stable during milling, mixing and compression. A compatibility study on azithromycin when mixed with tableting excipients showed some incompatibilities and this was helpful information to assist with the choice of excipients to be included in the tablet formulation. During the formulation study it became evident that good formulation strategies can greatly improve the flow properties of a drug. The stability of amorphous azithromycin was also studied. During this phase of the study an atypical stability indicating method was used in order to determine and demonstrate the stability of amorphous azithromycin. Dissolution studies were used to illustrate the stability of amorphous azithromycin due to the fact that dissolution is the only method that indicates the phenomena of solution-mediated phase transformation of an amorphous form to a stable crystalline form. During the stability study of six months at 40°C ± 75% RH no recrystallisation of the amorphous form to the crystalline form occurred. It was concluded that amorphous azithromycin will remain stable during processing steps, product formulation and manufacturing as well as during storage for a period of six months at elevated temperature and humidity. / MSc (Pharmaceutics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

In the postmodern-day organisation, acknowledgement of the facts today is that the retail sector has changed dramatically over the past ten years. Boom periods, surplus shopping and good times have ended. We have entered an era of harsh changes, business collapse, mergers, acquisitions and turbulent competitive environments that demand a constant review of business structure, financial performance, business practices and value creation to provide any hope of the ability to trade sustainably into the future. Responsiveness by retailers in this modern day driven by market need changes causes an almost instantaneous response by retailers to adapt and service the consumer demand. Thus, in evaluation of the underlying reasons for retail market shifts, one starting with the basic premise and rule of the law of natural selection – adapt to the environment, or die. No doubt that customer demand and the competitive landscape dictate effective and quick response from retailers, driving the form, shape, volume and nature of change. Present day marketplace forces are generally forming a worldwide consumer marketplace that will appear dramatically different since 2010, pushing retailers to bring about fundamental improvements to their methods and business models in order to survive. Conventional campaigns will stop being sufficient to deal with trends which may drive the retail markets into the realm of extreme conditions. Retailers in South Africa, albeit not directly, are impacted by global shifts and changes. In an environment with increasing competition and the growing demands for operational efficiencies, sustained profits and customer orientation, SA retailers are looking beyond their traditional business models and organisational boundaries to develop and leverage the resources and capabilities of international best practice to create superior value and drive competitive advantages in the marketplace. Value-add in making things work better for customers, albeit through various business enhancement and improvement initiatives, the longer their relationship will endure with the company. Thus the potential of adopting a deliberate creativity approach within the broader strategic planning process of a company, might well be the value-add activity that provides the catalyst for closing the performance gap, through bridging and integrating the core concepts of creativity and applying these concepts within real business operations, with the explicit aim of improving business profitability. To this end, the study originated from a need for a creativity-driven approach to enhance business performance in a retail organisation and not only challenge current paradigms, but redefine furniture retailing and create new furniture retailing operating models. In so doing, using a deliberate creativity-driven approach, that will catapult furniture retail onto a new performance curve that ultimately creates shareholder value through an enhanced customer proposition. The researcher embarked on a journey to establish whether a structured deliberate creativity change management framework could improve a company’s competitiveness, effectiveness and profitability; and to what degree a creativity framework can be used to enhance performance within a company. The research study results and findings, together with the financial performance results revealed that the creativity interventions deployed did in fact enhance business performance (financial, cultural, productivity and organisational behaviour) over the specific study period. The study also includes the design of a Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Framework, Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Strategy, Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Implementation Plan and an Integrated Beyonder Scorecard, which can be applied to any type of retail business across numerous diverse disciplines. / PhD (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

It is a well-known fact that drugs can exist in different solid-state forms. These solid-state forms can be either crystalline or amorphous. Furthermore, significant differences are identified between the different solid-state forms of the same drug. Physico-chemical properties that are affected by the solid-state include: melting point, solubility, dissolution rate, stability, compressibility, processability, to name but a few. During the last two decades a significant amount of attention was directed towards the amorphous solid-state forms of drugs. The amorphous form is the direct opposite of the crystalline solid-state. While crystalline forms are constituted by unit cells arranged in a repetitive and structured nature, amorphous forms do not have a long-range order. This lack of order leads to an increase in the Gibbs free energy of such compounds which in turn leads to increased dissolution and solubility. The advantage of improved aqueous solubility and dissolution is a sought after characteristic within the pharmaceutical industry. Improved solubility ultimately could lead to improved bioavailability of a drug. In this study the amorphous nature and stability of amorphous azithromycin was studied. Although previous studies reported that amorphous azithromycin can be easily prepared, there is not a significant amount of data available on the stability of the amorphous form. Furthermore, the effect of milling, mixing, compression, handling and storage on the amorphous form was also investigated. This study showed that amorphous azithromycin remains stable during milling, mixing and compression. A compatibility study on azithromycin when mixed with tableting excipients showed some incompatibilities and this was helpful information to assist with the choice of excipients to be included in the tablet formulation. During the formulation study it became evident that good formulation strategies can greatly improve the flow properties of a drug. The stability of amorphous azithromycin was also studied. During this phase of the study an atypical stability indicating method was used in order to determine and demonstrate the stability of amorphous azithromycin. Dissolution studies were used to illustrate the stability of amorphous azithromycin due to the fact that dissolution is the only method that indicates the phenomena of solution-mediated phase transformation of an amorphous form to a stable crystalline form. During the stability study of six months at 40°C ± 75% RH no recrystallisation of the amorphous form to the crystalline form occurred. It was concluded that amorphous azithromycin will remain stable during processing steps, product formulation and manufacturing as well as during storage for a period of six months at elevated temperature and humidity. / MSc (Pharmaceutics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Published Article / Higher education curriculum reform is a worldwide phenomenon induced by both the internal and external environments of higher education functioning. While a variety of factors are attributed to these changing environments, this paper focuses mainly on the epistemological domain characterising these changes. As the fundamental "business" of higher education, "knowledge" is perceived in this discussion as the essential terrain in which the competing global-local (glocal) interests and concerns unfold. Based on a case study model of two higher educational institutions with traditionally disparate academic cultures, the paper concludes with a trilogy of models posited as facilitating space for epistemological diversity.

The peaceful transition from apartheid to a democratised society is one of South Africa’s most impressive achievements. The attainment of these achievements has placed enormous pressure on the country to “shift to a higher gear”, i.e. increasing the number of players who contribute to the economic development of the country, thus building on its’ political success (Thomas, 1996). The ability to become competitive in the global economy will be determined by the capacity to increase the pool of suitably qualified people and the willingness to accept, value and empower the human talent of all South Africans.