The theme of work: „The investigation of future technological teacher’s communication capabilities”. Communication as science object is too common, different and unarticulated process. Its manifestation differ depending from proceeding context: number of participant and roles, communication channels and means, space and time, cultural environment, goals and content. Communication – it is intercourse among people, interchange of experience, ideas, outlives; changing of information, it’s enriching using oral and nonverbal sings (signals). Communication is the essential human origin, existence and perfection term, because in the same time it is presenting like assumption of person’s moral maturation, like base of socialisation. Communication – it is one of the main human values, it is what people think to be the most important and valuated it the most. The communication between people is appealing to sings system. The first communication condition for it would be meaningful – know the language. Communication related us with another person, helps to meet the social requirements. At first certain individual relation requirements is meeting, that is belonging to family, group of friends, and so on. Another social demand type – control demand – it is influence on another, feeling power on surrounding. The third social requirement type – is affectionate requirement that is to take care on other and feel care from another. According some authors the communication can be divided... [to full text]

Enterprise risk management (ERM) is a widely studied management control process, representing an important advancement from the traditional methods by which firms control the risks they face. This study steps back from attempts to quantify the relationship between ERM and firm performance. Instead, it explores how non-financial institutions with significant time and resource commitments to ERM configure those resources to effectuate a downside-upside duality as ERM is adopted, using for the first time in ERM research the theoretical lens of ambidexterity as a dynamic capability. This duality is the simultaneous engagement in mitigating existing and emerging risks while pursuing new value contributions from risk management processes. Empirical evidence indicates that the downside-upside duality is asymmetric, and challenges exist in quantifying the upside. The upside value component is most closely associated with raising the level of the risk discourse in firms. This is accomplished structurally by establishing new ERM-focused organizational subunits, and contextually by stretching capabilities. Dynamic capabilities emerge as firms sense, seize and reconfigure resources in the operationalization of ERM to supplant core competencies associated with traditional modes of risk management. Practitioners will gain from this research a richer understanding of the fit, form and function of ERM informed by empirical data and extrinsic theory.

The central theme of the study is whether deliberate actions to realise aspirations can and would be likely to increase capabilities amongst the poor, and whether such attempts might reduce poverty. Capabilities are seen here as real opportunity sets which people can use to achieve what they want to be or do (Sen, 1990:43-44). In addition Amartya Sen also emphasises the important role of agency in the achievement of capabilities (Sen, 1985). The relationship between aspirations, agency and capabilities is therefore explored, with emphasis on whether people can escape a potential poverty trap by deliberate and focused use of agency. I also ask what role structural opportunities and constraints play in this process. The study has been largely inspired by the idea of Arjun Appadurai (2004) that the poor might be constrained in their efforts to escape poverty because they lack the capacity to aspire, as they might have been socialised to accept that their aspirations would not be realisable. This idea was tested in a five year action research programme in Site C, Khayelitsha, near Cape Town. The dissertation offers an analysis of the programme in which a group of women was assisted in voicing their aspirations and subsequently worked on the realisation of these aspirations with a limited amount of support and facilitation by the researcher. Although many papers have been written on the social and economic implications of Appadurai’s idea, both within and external to the human development approach, the practical implementation of the idea in a project seems to be novel. The analysis of aspirations and capabilities is contextualised in the dissertation. The history and migration of the participating women show how their lives have been shaped by colonialism, apartheid, and their own cultural practices. This is followed by a discussion of the literature which informs the research and the analysis. The capability approach is discussed with particular reference to its conceptual tools, and the differences in the approaches of Sen and Nussbaum are briefly described. I review the ways in which capabilities are generally measured, and discuss the perspectives of different authors on individualism in the approach. Adaptation and agency as seen from the perspective of the capability approach provide important conceptual material for the analysis in a later chapter. A number of studies which assessed capabilities by qualitative means are then briefly reviewed, and these again provide background information for the analysis of the Khayelitsha study. The study on the use of agency in the capability approach reveals that there are lacunae, which could possibly be addressed by amplification from other disciplines. With this in mind agency is further explored in different disciplines – economics, psychology and social theory. Particular attention is given to three classical theorists of agency, Giddens, Bourdieu and Habermas, but the work of Archer, Latour, Long and Joas is also reviewed. I then recommend that the capability approach would benefit from a hermeneutical analysis of agency, and indicate specific elements which I think can be brought forward into such an extension. The literature review also includes a section on aspirations, which takes account of the conceptual relationship between aspirations, agency and capabilities. The empirical material is introduced under the umbrella of an action research programme which spanned a five year period. As part of this programme there was a household survey to obtain benchmark data. This was followed by the presentation of a life skills course based on Participatory Action Research or PRA methods. Between late 2006 and 2010 the women implemented their decisions, and their actions were observed. The main research process during this phase was an ethno-methodological study of the participating women. During this phase a number of life histories were recorded and I also conducted a set of individual interviews which focussed on individual agency. In 2010 I assessed the women’s increase in functionings and capabilities by taking note of actions taken towards achieving their aspirations, and in 2012 I recorded seven interviews on the rural-urban dynamics in their lives. The main findings of the household survey are given in a separate chapter on research findings. The different recordings of the aspirations the women articulated, and how these changed, are also recorded in the chapter on findings. The analysis of the respondents’ increase in functionings and capabilities is done with reference to an adaptation of a diagram published by Robeyns (2005:98), which visualises the essential conceptual parts of the capability approach. I adapt the diagram for a specific social context, for aspiration formulation, for agency assessment, and for the assessment of increased capabilities. In a second analysis chapter I do a hermeneutic agency analysis of six of the participating women in the context of the capability approach, asking whether the pursuit of their aspirations had been agency-unlocking. This is followed by a concluding chapter. / Philosophiae Doctor - PhD

Infrastructure development is a topic that has occupied a noble niche within development thinking since the middle of the twentieth century. However, despite over half a century of research concerning infrastructure development processes, structurally-oriented development theories continue to dominate infrastructure development research and praxis. Critically informed approaches to development, which acknowledge the integral role of place, power, and agency to infrastructure research, have yet to make a noticeable mark within infrastructure development policymaking. A review of the multidisciplinary infrastructure and development literature reveals a clear emphasis on structurally-oriented processes of infrastructure provision, and an insufficient understanding of agency-oriented, place-specific processes of infrastructure access, particularly within the context of inequitable societies. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to critically examine infrastructure development processes based on the lived experiences of marginalized populations and to integrate such experiences into the construction of infrastructure knowledge. This dissertation is a compilation of three manuscripts and three additional chapters (the introduction, methodology, and conclusion). The first of these manuscripts, entitled The Science and Politics of Infrastructure Research, is a conceptual paper that critically explores the intersection of infrastructure and development literature. Herein I describe three perspectives, the technocratic, interventionist, and critical perspectives, that articulate the different ways that infrastructure is valued among multiple actors involved in the production of infrastructure knowledge. Among these perspectives, I contend that technocratic and interventionist perspectives have occupied a dominant position with respect to informing infrastructure development policy and praxis throughout the twentieth century. I question whether such dominance is the product of superior scientific rigor or the politicized process of knowledge production. Towards the goal of giving greater prominence to the critical perspective, and in effort to offer a systematic way forward from this post-development critique, I propose the Critical Acquisition Framework. The framework is designed to facilitate an agency-oriented understanding of infrastructure development processes from the perspectives of marginalized groups. Inspired by critical-social theory and capability analyses, the Critical Acquisition Framework helps to understand how marginalized groups deploy their existing capability sets to access infrastructure via multiple overlapping institutions. In addition, the framework helps to envision alternative agency-oriented scenarios of infrastructure access. In essence, the framework demonstrates how the acquisition process influences the capability sets and therefore agency and power of marginalized groups. The framework can be used to assess whether infrastructure ???develops??? according to emic perspectives, or whether infrastructure reifies inequitable power relations. The research is informed by a critical methodological approach and mixed-methods research design. To investigate infrastructure access through the experiences of marginalized groups, the empirical aspect of this research is based on two instrumental case studies located in the northern highlands of Peru. The first case study and second manuscript is entitled: Women???s Acquisition of Domestic Water Services in the District of Cajamarca, Peru. Three impoverished women???s groups, representing rural, peri-urban, and urban locales are analysed, based on the women???s experiences of accessing water through their respective institutions of domestic water provision. Overall, the findings illustrate how marginalized groups exercise agency, as well as the limits to their agency in accessing domestic water services. Considerable variations are found in the quality of domestic water institutions that play a deciding role in women???s experiences of access. The findings also suggest that inefficient institutions may be perpetuated as such in order to maintain the powerful positions of dominant groups involved in domestic water provision. The second case study and third manuscript, is entitled Access for Whom and to What? A Critical Acquisition Framework for Understanding Rural Experiences of Multiple Accessibilities. This paper examines the iterative process through which vendors working within an informal market district repeatedly deploy their multiple capability sets to navigate multiple overlapping institutions that regulate comprehensive access to rural transportation and other privatized infrastructures. Three sub-processes of rural accessibility are investigated: transportation access, market access, and infrastructure access. The findings reveal the complexity of rural accessibility, and suggest that failures of infrastructure access may be attributed to inequitable institutions that regulate the acquisition process. The instrumental case studies have been used to help inform, test, and refine the Critical Acquisition Framework. In doing so, this research has achieved its aim to integrate the experiences of marginalized populations in the construction of infrastructure development knowledge. This research offers a new way of understanding an old problem of infrastructure development. Positioning the notions of agency, power, and place as central tenets of infrastructure development analyses, not only complements the existing body of infrastructure knowledge, but can also lend to a more equitable process of infrastructure development within inequitable societies.

ABSTRACT This research is about identifying the characteristics or success profiles of professionals working in the turnaround industry. The turnaround industry possesses a number of dynamic capabilities in processes, positions, resources and paths that are unique to its industry. The firms that compete in the turnaround industry serve their clients, the dying organizations, by using a mix of these dynamic capabilities. While these dynamic capabilities are seen as the turnaround firms’ “secrets of success,” they have over time evolved into “best practices.” This commoditization of best practices in the turnaround industry has created a need for turnaround firms to search for a competitive advantage. Specifically, this advantage is identified in the literature as the skills, knowledge, and experience of the turnaround professional. These unique characteristics of the turnaround management professional (TMP), see appendix C for a complete definitions of terms, have been accounted for in the Turnaround Management Association (TMA) certification process called the Certified Turnaround Professional, or CTP. One of the TMA’s goals is to establish professional work standards and guidelines and to regulate the industry. While a noble effort, this focus takes the “competitive advantage” away from the turnaround organization and standardizes it into the “best practices” arena via “certified” professionals leaving these organizations to compete on size and location alone. Evidence from a focus group, case research interviews, and two different surveys, suggests that there is a profound difference in the effectiveness of TMPs beyond the knowledge, skill, and experience levels identified as one of the core components of dynamic capabilities theory. This evidence led to the investigation of psychometric profiling as a method to measure the distinct success profiles of these “highly successful” TMPs, or Most Valuable players (MVP). Measuring the thinking style (cognitive reasoning ability), work motivation, personality behaviors, and occupational interests of MVP s, has led to the discovery of a success composite. The findings of this research suggest that MVP s score higher on this composite than do other TMPs who were identified as “low performers”, or Least Valuable Players (LVP), as well as non-turnaround managers, executives, and business professionals in general. It is postulated that by using this composite score in hiring, training, and promoting turnaround professionals, a turnaround firm will obtain a competitive advantage in their industry and generate higher success for all stakeholders. Resultantly, the researchers have uncovered a critical gap in the dynamic capability theory surrounding the construct of human capital. Evidence suggests that psychometric profiling is an acceptable and, indeed, important measure of the value of human capital.

This research is an application of the Capabilities Approach to a southern educational context, aiming to answer how children’s capabilities differ across different types of schooling (public, private and religious) in Pakistan. While conventional research on education in the country dwells on aspects like economic returns to education or qualitative differences in public and private provision, a broader perspective addressing the institutionalization of a tier-ed education structure and its consequences for school-going children remains missing. The current study is an incubation of the same perspective; it asks: how do primary school going children’s educational capabilities differ across different types of schooling in Pakistan?, and by re-framing the question of education equality as a capabilities one, sheds light on appropriate ways of conceptualizing and measuring educational capabilities in a developing country context. Since the use of capabilities with respect to Pakistan’s school diversity is an innovative research area, it justifies the choice of a mixed-methods research design. The qualitative phase comprises focus groups with children and their parents aimed at balancing universal lists of educational capabilities with local insights. The quantitative phase involves a capabilities questionnaire for children built using both theoretical and local valuations as well as a household survey to obtain richer information on each child participant. Qualitative findings for the study reflect on contextualized dimensions of theoretically relevant educational capabilities as well as two new capability categories – Religion and Values and Etiquettes – valued by participants. Quantitative findings for the study discuss (i) differences in children’s educational capabilities across school types in Pakistan, and (ii) the individual, family and household factors potentially explaining such variation. Together, the two sets of findings highlight the complexities in development and evaluation of educational capabilities amidst school diversity in Pakistan and reveal important conclusions for the country’s education policy planning and development.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In all countries, regardless of culture and level of development, science and technology(S&T) are seen as key areas for further material development and welfare. A certain proportion of the population needs to develop S&T-related skills and competences at a high level. But also for the majority, who will not enter such careers, S&T are key subjects to master the challenges in everyday life and for full participation in democracy. In our efforts to make S&T attractive as careers and as a key subject for mastering challenges in everyday life, we need to know more about the interests, concerns and values of the learners.The study of Zimbabwean learners sought to find what students like to learn in science, their interest in science lessons, use of science principles in everyday life and what attitudes they have about the environment. Learners’ attitudes to S&T were also measured by an open ended question that sought their ideas on what they would like to research on if they were scientists.The empirical basis for this thesis is data collected with the ROSE instrument, developed by a team of international scholars in S&T education. Data used in this thesis is from twenty one secondary schools in Zimbabwe (N=734) targeting sixteen year old learners.Comparisons are made with twenty eight other countries.Factor analysis and descriptive statistics has been used to make comparisons of Zimbabwean and international trends.The Zimbabwean sample generally showed a mismatch between their expectations and realities of the science education curriculum. Results suggested that Science education was largely irrelevant to their needs and interests. Many out-of-class experiences were not explored in science classes. However, the sensitivity of learners to significant issues around their lives, such as AIDS and other diseases showed in their wish to research to cure those infected.The newly found voice of the learners will provide new insights on how to improve science education in Zimbabwe in such a way that it is able to meet the hopes, aspirations and the perceived interests, needs and priorities of the learners. Rapid developments in mundane applications of science and technology require that the curriculum negotiates a level that empowers learners to cope with a technologically driven world.For the development of capabilities to understand and use science and technology, either in daily life or study at higher levels the science education debate must periodically consider needs, views and concerns of the learners themselves among other stakeholders.

This research considers how competencies are developed that allow for a firm to explore. Limited empirical studies exist on how these competencies are developed and how they evolve. Utilising a single case study research methodology approach, this research looks at a single case event at South Africa’s third biggest bank, First National Bank (FNB). In 2012, FNB was awarded the title of Most Innovative Bank in the World at the 2012 BAI –Finacle Global Banking Innovation Awards, recognising their contributions to radical banking solutions. Considering only one such innovation, the Smart Device offering, this research places into context how FNB have evolved the competencies to radically innovate in a world of scarce resources. The fundamental outcome of this research is that competencies take considerable time and resources to develop and as such, firms must make intelligent choices about their strategic competitive path. The research also highlights that the competency to explore requires a coalesce of many factors that when aligned with that strategic path, ready the firm to execute on opportunities that are outside of their relevant knowledge distant domain. FNB’s “customer eco-system” model has ensured congruence with existing competencies and upstream processes while engaging their employees in natural collaboration across business units. This research considers these and other factors that have led FNB to position themselves for exploration. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Background: This study explores the significance of ICT on the capabilities of unbanked MSE entrepreneurs in Lesotho. MSE entrepreneurs are the primary source of income for their families, especially in the context of developing countries. Accordingly, MSEs are fundamental instruments for economic growth, poverty alleviation and source of employment in developing countries. Hence, the country that invests in this business sector is a step closer to accomplishing its MDGs. Purpose: The study explored and empirically assessed the influence of mobile payments among MSE entrepreneurs through a capabilities lens. Given that MSEs are crucial for developing countries, the targeted participants were MSE entrepreneurs from diverse trading industries in Lesotho. Research methodology: The methodology for this study was qualitative. Exploratory and descriptive research methods were used to evaluate the influence of mobile payments on the capabilities of MSE entrepreneurs. This study adopted Kleine's Choice Framework to explore and empirically assess the benefits of mobile payments among MSE entrepreneurs. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and field notes and analysed using thematic analysis. Key Findings: The findings revealed the use of M-Pesa within the MSE sector enabled microentrepreneurs to accomplish their goals. The findings show that M-Pesa leads to the growth of MSEs. Therefore, entrepreneurs in the MSE business sector are capable of providing food, shelter and clothes for their families through income generated from their enterprises. Additionally, MSE entrepreneurs bank, transfer and receive money through accessible and available mobile payment platforms. However, these entrepreneurs face issues such as network failure, withdrawal amount limits and security risks while using mobile payments. Value of the study: The study contributes to the existing ICT4D and mobile payments literature in Lesotho by discussing the influence of mobile payment through the Choice Framework.

Organisations are facing increased competition in contemporary business environments. At the same time, cloud computing is a catalyst for new software applications and services available to organisations. Therefore, cloud computing is a viable option to provide innovation within the organisation. Therefore, organisations need to recognise the potential transformation of its business model, to take advantage of cloud computing. This research sets out to describe and explain the relationship between the various business strategy factors and CC. Organisations have to guard against using cloud-computing capabilities only to provide organisational efficiencies, as the efficiencies gained do not always translate into business value. Adopting cloud computing can cause disruptions in the organisation. Therefore, the organisation needs a strategy and understand the relationship between the business strategy and the cloud computing options available. The present study performs multi-method qualitative research, within the South African context. By taking a constructivist view, the researcher believes the knowledge will emerge from the interaction the people have with their environment. The research purpose states the research as descriptive and explanatory. Data collection for the present study performs face-to-face interviews. A general interview-guided approach ensures the research covers same areas of interest in all the interviews. For the data analysis, the researcher uses an inductive thematic analysis method. Software-as-a-Service influences the customer behaviour and forces organisations to re-evaluate their use of cloud computing. However, new cloud computing capabilities brought into the organisation need to provide a value proposition with an expected time-to-market. Also, large organisations require a technology architecture review to assess the impact on their infrastructure. The multi-faceted cost structure coupled with legacy systems and legacy investment products can prevent the adoption of cloud computing. Another factor is the vendor relationship and their influence regarding the solutions into which an organisation invests. The present study concludes how cloud computing offers no competitive differentiation for South African investment services organisations. For these organisations, their existing business models remains profitable. Business strategy, therefore, has no compelling reason to consider cloud computing. Furthermore, information technology is a utility service. For these organisations, the information technology and business strategy align through the service-level method. This alignment method forces the information technology department to focus on maintaining a stable and reliable infrastructure. Cloud computing is only considered when contributing to the service-level. A misalignment then follows, and individual business units adopt cloud computing to fulfil their business need. As a result, the business unit is ready to adopt cloud computing while the information technology department is a hindrance towards adopting cloud computing. Software-as-a-Service solutions are the most used cloud computing option, based on its ability to offer an accelerated time-to-market for proof-of-concept products and services. However, most final business solutions move onto the internal infrastructure of the organisation. Platform-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service are used to a lesser degree by organisations in this study.