This doctoral submission represents over ten years of focused research that has resulted in a unique collection of academic and professional articles. The epithet "unique" is adopted to reflect that over those years this area of study has been relatively untouched by other academic researchers. This submission presents a total of eight academic and seven professional journal publications that chronicle the major output of numerous research projects undertaken between 1992 and 2002. The publications adhere to a central aim - to investigate the practical use and complex interactions between stakeholders of the individual insolvency rescue vehicle the Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA). The research projects employed a variety of relevant methodologies to populate an emerging conceptual model of the prime factors affecting the incidence, usage and outcomes of IVA cases. The first five articles report and develop the data collected during the various projects. The articles build on each other, analysing results and comparing these with previous studies to underline reliability in the data. The final three articles draw threads from the research data and develop the conceptual model further. As a research progression this submission contains all of the necessary ingredients of a doctoral thesis. It focuses on a discrete body of knowledge, builds on a conceptual model, gathers valuable data and tests it, draws strong conclusions and, finally, establishes and contributes new theory in this area of study.

Whenever legal disciplines overlap interesting scenarios occur and differences in opinions create intellectual tension. One such interesting scenario occurs when employees’ rights are affected during a company’s liquidation or business rescue. The employees of a company are normally the last persons to find out that a company is struggling financially. They are also the only stakeholders who are in no position to negotiate their risk should the company be liquidated. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the rights given to employees during a company’s liquidation and business rescue. The fundamental ideologies of company law, insolvency law and labour law are challenged and examined to attempt a harmonizing result that respects the core of each discipline. It is crucial to determine whether an appropriate balance is struck between the interests of all the stakeholders of the company during these procedures. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate whether South Africa manages to strike this balance. If employee rights are protected whilst a company is restructured back to solvency and success, this balance will be struck. An evaluation will also be made whether employees are always better protected during business rescue than in liquidation. The study analyses employee rights in a company’s liquidation and during a company’s restructuring process. The comparative study of employee rights in liquidation and rescue is done with the jurisdictions of Australia and England – countries with similar procedures. Important conclusions show that South Africa protects employee rights during business rescue procedures the best. An appropriate balance is indeed struck between the interests of all stakeholders of a company during business rescue procedures and employees are most of the time better off after a restructuring than in a liquidation. Should the recommendations for law reform be implemented in our legislation, South Africa will overcome the few obstacles currently in its way to be seen as a world leader where employee rights are concerned in liquidation proceedings as well as business rescue. / Mercantile Law / LL. D.