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M.Comm. / The word "culture" has many definitions and implications. Its nature is often difficult to define and hard to compress. It reflects how people think about their world and environment and how they make choices to survive within it. Most importantly, though, it mirrors the changes in mindset and growth of a specific group of people.

South Africa’s unique history has produced an organisational climate where race groups forcibly separated in the past, have to now work together in harmony. Limited interaction between the ethnic groups creates a culturally uninformed society where trust between groups is lacking. The objective of this study was to confirm the levels of collectivism for the different race groups, and to determine the relationship between collectivism, propensity to trust and in group trust. A survey was administered to a Business Unit of a South African petrochemical company. 387 responses were obtained from a sufficiently diverse sample. The results confirmed that blacks and Indians are more collectivistic than whites and coloureds. Collectivistic groups had a lower propensity to trust and higher in group trust. This research creates awareness regarding the different aspects of culture and the behaviours these cultural differences drive. Trust development must be approached with a culturally informed view.

M.Comm. / The environment in which a South African business operates are distinguished by change. Businesses must on a continuous basis adopt to the demands of change in their environment. This study focus on the unseen or invisible components of a business, such as the structure, culture, leadership and human resource compliment, which enable the business to implement the formalised strategy, which in turn assist the business in adopting to the change in environment. Chapter two contains a short summary of strategy formulation and implementation. As soon as the strategy has been formalised and implementation of strategy must take place, the emphasised is moved to the unseen components of business. From Chapter three to six a iscussion on the resources required to support and manage the implementation of strategy, follows. In these chapters the following is raised: the structure that is required to ensure that strategy objectives are achieved; the required leadership, with emphasis on the role of leaders vs managers in a business; the relationship of strategy and culture; and the optimal composition of the human resource complement to ensure the implementation of the strategy. A summary of the recommendations of the study are the following: develop a suitable structure to support the strategy of business and tend to move to flatter organisational structures; obtain and develop leaders in the business; build and encourage a strong corporate culture; and Top Management must ensure and commit them to obtain the required human resource compliment in the business. In conclusion a recipe to the successful implementation of a strategy "Be customer focused and get the basis right.

M.Com. / This study has been undertaken with the specific objective of acquiring an insight into the concept "organizational culture" within a strategic management context, as well as the role played by the concept in the formulation and implementation of organizational strategy. Researchers from within various disciplines, such as anthropology, industrial psychology and strategic management, have analysed various aspects of the concept ...

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a Masters of arts by coursework and research report in social anthropology University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg / As capitalism speeds up and spreads out whilst entering a new phase of internationalization, individuals are left with uncertainty with regards to what ‘place’ means and how they should relate to it. Within the corporate sphere, this must ring true for many office workers – especially those who have migrated to new cities or countries. Scholarly work on time-space compression has prompted anthropologists (and social theorists) to re-think ‘place’ not solely in terms of capital, but also in relation to race or gender. By looking at an Indian-owned international mining corporation, which has entered Africa – specifically in Tete, Mozambique – with, in their view, the aim of functioning as a ‘local company’, I wish to interrogate corporate self-conceptualisation by asking the question: “What does it mean to be an Indian corporation in Africa?” I explore their Colony – made up of the corporate administrative office and adjacent housing compound – by looking at how this space is constructed in relation to the outside space of the country in which it is located, as well as through an unpacking of this construction with regards to workplace relations in the corporate office and in the lives of office workers both within and outside of the office. We can no longer look at a single place without considering the complex mix of the global that makes it up, that indeed collapses into it. We are challenged to see place as a point of intersection; to not merely look at the visible networks of global capital, but also to recognise and give importance to those invisible flows of people and networks that link them, especially in relation to south-south partnerships and interactions. When looking at the office space, we must acknowledge that the office space is more than simply a daily meeting place – it is not static, and it has no boundaries (other than its four walls). Rather, it is more complex than a single identity and yet, at the same time, is unique in the complexities that unify it. / GR2017

Organisational change has proven to be a major challenge for many businesses worldwide with the pharmaceutical environment being no exception. The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly pressurised by stakeholders who seek reduced cost, higher value and quality. This has resulted in many pharmaceutical businesses attempting to launch various continuous improvement methodologies, which ultimately fail. Whereas failure of continuous improvement undertakings within the pharmaceutical environment is well documented, this study aimed to understand the factors that influence the successful sustainability of such endeavours. The purpose of this study was therefore to identify and create an understanding of the factors that influence a culture of continuous improvement within the pharmaceutical environment. The literature review revealed that factors such as leadership, teamwork, communication, continuous improvement capability and a continuous improvement mind-set contributed to the successful implementation of a culture that embraces continuous improvement. It was recognised that building a culture of continuous improvement is not instantaneous and that it requires all stakeholders to be committed and to acknowledge that changing culture requires time. An empirical study with a questionnaire as data collecting instrument was conducted to assess respondents’ perceptions of the levels of continuous improvement, leadership, teamwork, communication, continuous improvement capability and a continuous improvement mind-set within a selected pharmaceutical manufacturing business. The study revealed that all these factors were related and influenced a culture of continuous improvement. Furthermore, leadership and a continuous improvement mind-set proved to have the most significant relationship with a culture of continuous improvement. Recommendations were provided for the creation of a culture of continuous improvement in pharmaceutical businesses.

Measurement and evaluation in the publicly funded arts sector is a contested area. On the one hand measurement is constantly demanded by funders to justify the value of art projects, on the other hand, there is a lack of consensus on how it should be done and whether effective evaluation is even possible in the arts. In this context, there is widespread resistance to practices of evaluation within the sector. Previous Cultural Policy research has focussed on what cultural value is, and whether it is desirable, or even possible, to measure value at all in the arts. In contrast, there is relatively little research into the experience of those at the heart of the measurement: the arts practitioners working in settings where evaluation is required and how evaluation regimes affect their practices. There is a similar lack of research into the role of the organisation as an intermediary within the interpretation of value and measurement. Using a longitudinal, ethnographic case study research, the thesis examines how artists and other workers in a cultural organization, respond to expectations of evaluation and shape their practices as a result of those expectations. The thesis adapts the institutional logics perspective frame, creating a sector specific frame to explore how logics of the family, state, corporation, community, religion, profession and market all operate within evaluation. Seen through this lens, the artists’ responses to evaluation are shown to be a response to intersecting and clashing logics. This approach gives a richer understanding of artists’ responses, and also offers a new frame for considering other challenges within the sector. Using this understanding, I develop an alternative approach to arts evaluation, based on evaluation as a practice, not an output, and taking into account the multiple logics in action and arising from artists’ own valuation practices.

Based on the institutional logic that enterprises will conform with the immediate cultural values and settings in a nation, the important influence of culture on corporate governance has been acknowledged in recent research. It has been shown that the quality of corporate governance varies strongly within regions and globally. Therefore, tests of cultural influences on single components of corporate governance or surrogates thereof have been conducted and their outcomes discussed. This research investigates the influence of culture on corporate governance using all 6 Hofstede cultural dimensions and a uniquely broad set of corporate governance factors that are present in reality. Using 565,787 year observations relating to 18,344 companies in 41 countries for the years 2010-2015, the results of cross-sectional regression analysis with appropriate control variables is presented. The ensuing results further enhance our understanding of culture's influence on the composition of the board of directors and will help regulators and lawmakers in their endeavors to improve relevant legislation as well as allow multinational companies to design effective and reliable corporate governance structures in their enterprises. In my analysis, I find a substantial influence of cultural dimensions on the structural elements of the composition of the board of directors around the globe. In particular board independence, time on the board, gender diversity, and absolute size of the board are impacted by the surrounding cultural environment of the enterprise. These results also hold true in a robustness test with alternative cultural dimensions. A final moderating test gives some evidence of the moderating influence the cultural environment has on the relationship between board structural elements and the quality of corporate governance.

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