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D.Phil. / South Africa’s SMMEs are characterised by, among other challenges, poor management, poor entrepreneurial performance and low global competitiveness. The Global Entrepreneurial Monitor (GEM) reported that South Africa ranks low in terms of global competitiveness. This study evaluated the management performance of small, micro- and medium-sized enterprises (SMMEs) in the South African building construction industry, the third largest employer in South Africa. The main research aim was to find the reasons for the poor management performance of the building construction industry SMMEs and to make recommendations to improve the management performance of these SMMEs. International management performance models were analysed to select an appropriate model to evaluate the respondents’ management performance. The South African Excellence Model (SAEM) was deemed the most appropriate and was selected and used as research instrument. The researcher selected an evaluative, comparative design for the study. A two-part questionnaire was used for data collection. “Part 1” questionnaire profiled the sampled SMMEs to identify independent variables that influenced their management performance. The self-assessment performance measurement questionnaire (“Part 2” questionnaire) evaluated their management performance. The results of the study were twofold. Firstly, the mean-ranking results that ranked the eleven management performance criteria were tested for equality. Management performance criteria that showed low mean ranks were reasons for the respondents’ poor management performance. Secondly, independence tests identified the factors that influenced the SMMEs’ management performance. The greatest deficiency in terms of management performance was lack of social responsibility amongst SMMEs. The second largest deficiency occurred at business processes, followed by the planning and strategy, people management, and people satisfaction criteria. The most sufficient criterion was customer satisfaction, followed by leadership, customer and market focus, resources and information management and lastly supplier and partnership performance criteria. Hypothesised reasons for the respondents’ poor management performance were tested statistically. Of the five independent variables tested to determine whether they significantly improved the respondents’ management performance, education and technical skills training significantly improved the management performance. Age, gender and race of owner-managers, however, did not. The study recommends strengthening the SACEM by introducing financial management criteria and benchmarking SMMEs’ management performance with industry and world-class best practice. The study found that management performance criteria that showed low scores (social responsibility, business processes, and planning and strategy) require urgent intervention.

The prediction of motion of slowly moving landslides, also referred to as creeping slopes, is important for the reduction of landslide hazards. Such continuous and slowly moving landslides do not represent the usual stability problems of geotechnical analysis because these slopes are neither still nor ruptured but they move. For proper modeling of the motion of landslides, it is essential to develop improved techniques that integrate appropriate modeling of geological materials involved, laboratory and field tests, and verifications using computational methods. This dissertation focusses attention on the development of such an appropriate model for the time-dependent behavior of creeping landslides. Based on field observations it is proposed that the phenomenon of creeping landslides can be considered as involving the motion of a large mass of soil over a parent (fixed) mass with pronounced shear deformations occuring in a thin layer between the moving mass and the parent mass. The thin layer is refered to as interface zone while the overlying mass is refered to as solid body. The generalized Hierarchical Single Surface (HiSS) series of plasticity models are adopted to characterize the solid body. The interface zone is modeled using the specialization of the HiSS models for conditions occuring in the thin layer. Time dependency is introduced in constitutive models by adopting Perzyna's elastoviscoplastic formulation. The parameters for the HiSS and interface models are determined from laboratory tests on soils obtained from an actual slowly moving landslide at Villarbeney in Switzerland. Triaxial tests along various stress paths and oedemeter tests are conducted for the solid body. New analytical solutions are derived for prediction of oedometer tests. A general procedure for determination of viscous parameters is developed and techniques to process raw creep test data are proposed. Novel and representative simple shear interface tests are conducted to find parameters for the interface model. Special techniques for experimental analysis have been developed. A modified interface model to simulate the observed phenomenon of only compaction under shear is proposed. The parameters for the constitutive models are verified by numerically backpredicting experimental tests. An existing finite element code has been modified to incorporate various aspects of the small strain elastoviscoplastic formulation. Field measurements in the form of inclinometer profiles at various borehole locations on Villarbeney landslide are available. These inclinometer profiles are predicted using the proposed model. A comparison of the field measurements and the results from finite element analysis shows that such a model can be successfully used for predicting the behavior of slowly moving landslides.