The study examines the importance of competitive advantage and change in a dynamic environment. The purpose of the study is to explore how AAI could remain relevant and competitive in the market and examines how regularly changing its approaches to programme delivery could be used to meet needs of the community. The study also focused on the impact of AAI’s pace of change and how the pace impacted on the organization’s effectiveness and quality of programmed delivery. AAI relied on its past successful programmes to address the need of communities in many new countries. However, previously successful programmes did not prove popular when rolled in new markets. AAI programmes are suffering substantial withdrawals from beneficiaries. Beneficiaries are withdrawing from AAI programmes, complaining that the programme delivery approaches were not competitive and innovative. Many new organizations being formed are competing not just for beneficiary markets, but for financial resources (funding), skills and new ideas of delivering programmes. Traditional government type donors are being overtaken by a new crop of donors that is in favour of funding competitive and innovative organizations. Traditional aid organizations are losing market share to smaller agencies. The organizational structure of AAI appears not to support effective and efficient delivery of programmes. With no senior manager at the helm of the department, coordinating activities, sustaining competitive advantage and managing change within the programme department remained a challenge for the organization. A frastruated staff compliments exacerbated the situation. Employee turnover at the key and tactical levels resulted in the department operating without adequate staff and key personnel. This made coordination and cooperation amongst units very difficult. Various programme units operated in silos and mixed messages were sent to community resulting in the community being unhappy with AAI. Community felt that AAI did not consult with them when deciding on how to meet their needs. Community members felt that AAI was taking unilateral decisions and did not care about their feedback and the quality of the programmes delivered. This study further examines how AAI has suffered due to its inability to respond to the needs of community and its failure to adapt to the changing business environment. It reveals how innovation and adaptability is critical for retaining competitive advantage. It reveals how capabilities once built can be eroded by competition through copying. It concludes by revealing the importance of dynamic capabilities in sustaining competitive advantage as well as the need to change in response to the market. / Graduate School of Business Leadership / (M.B.A.)

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.

The interest towards managing structural change successfully through downsizing activities has increased as a result of globalization and the recent economic, technological and demographic changes occurring across Europe. As a result of downsizing activities companies often break a Psychological Contract that an employee has established with the organization when starting the employment contract. This results in employees experiencing negative feelings, lack of motivation, inability to re-motivate oneself after the downsizings and uncertainty about one’s future within the organization. If an employee is unable to rebuild the psychological contract, one might decide to resign from the organization as a consequence. Since employees are companies most valuable asset for companies and the key asset to remain competitive, companies should focus on preventing the violation of the psychological contract. The purpose of this study is to understand why some downsizing survivors decide to voluntarily resign during the post-downsizing era. A collective case study was conducted in a form of interviews from two cases. The results from the primary and secondary data illustrated that employees who are unable to rebuild the psychological contract are more likely to voluntarily resign.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

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Introduction: This thesis proposes new ways to think about change, a much discussed yet under-defined concept within organisational studies. The vast majority of existing work focuses on processes of organisational change, i.e. the management of change, whilst a small minority considers change in organisations, offering theories of change at the individual level. This study aimed to reverse the established research order by exploring individual interpretations of experiences of change at work to enrich and inform our understandings and indicate further and alternate areas for study. Methods: A Foucauldian theoretical lens was utilised to consider how ideas about change in the workplace have been constructed over time and why we think about change the way we do. A mixed methods approach was utilised. Bibliometric analysis and meta-narrative review were used to explore the development of the concept of change within organisational studies. A qualitative study was then conducted within the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence and National Health Service in England as organisations generally acknowledged to have undergone sustained, significant change over time. In-depth interviews (n=40) were conducted together with documentary analysis of materials volunteered by participants in order to investigate what individuals mean by change, how they distinguish between change and that which remains relatively constant (i.e. between change and stability), and how relationships are affected by change in organisations. These data were analysed using deductive and inductive analytical frameworks. A reflexive approach was adopted throughout data collection and analysis. How these insights might inform further research into change in organisations was then discussed in the context of related literature. Results: Six themes emerged from the investigation, namely: i) uncertainty at work; ii) progress and change; iii) dissonance and division; iv) definitions and boundaries; v) risks and vulnerabilities; vi) the role of stability. Participants described an organisational context dominated by change, most particularly frequent, imposed changes involving re-structuring and job moves. Change was seen to have created divisions between employees and the organisation, their colleagues and their sense of self, highlighting dissonance between personal/ professional and organisational values. Change was seen to go beyond the boundaries of the organisation into social and intimate worlds beyond work. Accounts of change included vulnerabilities for the organisation (e.g. reduced performance and employee dis-identification) and for individuals (e.g. employees’ well-being and the potential for discrimination). In contrast, stability was a neglected but important consideration for participants. Conclusion: This study suggests the normalisation of change as an everyday undertaking at work, contributing to individual and organisational uncertainty and vulnerability. This indicates not only a need to more clearly define change as a subject for study, but also a lack of consideration of stability as a source of certainty and balance. The use of change as a mechanism of control has contributed to a growth of managerialism and individualism and there is a need to better understand the troublesome effects of imposed change and its associated risks within and beyond the organisation. Conversely, the dynamic effects of organic change may offer significant benefits in allowing the organisation to adapt in accord with the wider environment.

This thesis focuses on the internal problems for companies changing customer service system and how to best avoid these problems and make the implementation of the new system as efficient as possible. The reason for focusing on the customer service systems was since more and more companies are transcending to e-commerce and having some form of customer service is common. As the technology is changing so does the requirements for the system and thereby companies are in need for constant change. The problem area is wide and the results can be applied to almost any company undergoing changes of customer service systems. In order to find the internal problems and how to avoid these to efficiently implement the new system, interviews were carried out with companies that had undergone some form of change in their customer service. Theoretical studies were also carried out in order to confirm the interviews. The results of the study were that companies need to involve the affected employees and work with employee involvement. Doing otherwise would in many cases make the employees resistant to change. Furthermore, the IT changes being carried out need to have a more humanistic perspective rather than technological perspective, as the case was. The main finding was that there was a clear connection between the level of employee involvement and the level of efficiency when changing to a new system. In addition, educating employees on the new system and information sharing about the system already before start would create efficient implementation.