School-based intervention in a post-colonial context forms part of a transformational process to address equity and the right to quality education. Interventions have had limited effect reducing the disparity between the haves and the have-nots, thereby perpetuating the cycle of intergenerational poverty and inequality. Quality Talk, a classroom discourse intervention, was used as a case study to explore the broader issues of school-based intervention. Using a mixed-methods integrated design the data collected was used to identify potential enablers and constraints of school-based intervention research in a rural context. Building on active intervention implementation models in health and education research I propose an integrated approach to school-based intervention that focuses on a multilevel process of implementation. The implementation process emphasises the interrelationship between the intervention, participants, and context. The role of researcher, as an active ingredient of implementation, is to assess and align the intervention within its contextual setting with the participants as they reflect on the intervention implementation process. The implementation of the intervention is linked to developing a multilevel support system focusing on professional development, leadership, and perceptions and attitudes towards the intervention. Together these factors aim at facilitating the transitioning of school and individual readiness to intervention implementation thereby developing teacher competence in providing quality education to students in the classroom. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Educational Psychology / PhD / Unrestricted

Background: The resource demanding textile industry has long been linked to the linear economy, an economy contributing to negative effects on the environment. However, there is an alternative to the linear economy, namely the circular economy. In a circular economy, a closed-loop design is promoted in order to eliminate the negative effects of the linear economy. However, in the context of the Swedish textile industry, there is a lack of case studies on the topic and especially regarding experienced barriers to a circular business model as well as drivers and enablers needed to overcome these barriers. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to support the development of the Sustainable Development Goal 12: sustainable production and consumption. This is done through exploring the experienced barriers to circular business models among companies in the Swedish textile industry at a macro and micro level, but also drivers and enablers in order to overcome these barriers. Method: This research follows an interpretivist view and an inductive approach based on a cross-case analysis of five companies. The research is qualitative and semi-structured interviews were conducted with open questions. The identified themes were analysed and interpreted with a careful awareness of the trustworthiness and ethical considerations. Conclusion: The result showed five barriers which appeared to be the most common across the companies. Namely, technological un-readiness, circularity costs, market unacceptance, financial shortage and knowledge gap. For these barriers, possible solutions in the form of drivers and enablers were identified. According to the findings, the identified drivers and enablers which have the greatest potential of positive impact on the barriers were as follows: knowledge sharing, collaboration, regulatory changes, more research and refocus of efforts

Background: Responsive Supply Chain (RSC) has been in the middle of attention nowadays, companies invest massively in their supply chains to adapt to dynamic changes in the market. Examples of prominent changes are technological advances and digitalization happening across various supply chain channels. Almost all businesses and managers are now challenged to build a RSC that better copes with these changes. Therefore, it is essential to explore the external requirements in the market that push business towards adopting a RSC strategy. Along with external requirements, internal enablers are also defining how efficiently supply chain are capable of implementing such a strategy.   Purpose:                     The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the external requirements of a responsive supply chain strategy. Furthermore, it will investigate the internal enablers necessarily to efficiently respond to those external requirements, and finally explore the challenges managers encounter while implementing a RSC model.   Method:   A qualitative method has been performed through a single case study analysis. Semi-structured interviews with different managerial levels are conducted to collect data from Nike, as a main research case. A content analysis method has been used to develop an adaptive model in order to fulfil our research purpose.   Conclusion: Our analysis showed that consumer behavior and social media played a significant role as external requirements. Change management is a key internal enabler for Nike to adapt their current set-up to further develop their responsive strategy. Information technology, resistance to change and trends in the market are amongst the key challenges while building a RSC model.

While conventional approaches of managing organizations have been considered to be outdated, Organizational Agility has been acclaimed for its prowess to cope with today's increasingly volatile and dynamic environment. Yet the predominant focus has been directed towards how agility is achieved, while its retention as organizations grow has to a great extent been unexplored. Through a qualitative case study of a renowned organization for its unorthodox approach, this study aims to contribute with an extension to the current scope of organizational agility by stretching beyond the focus on mere transformations in an attempt to understand in what ways organizational agility is retained as they grow. The findings of this study challenge the common conceptions found within literature suggesting that changes in the external environment are what drives organization’s to be agile in order to sustain its competitiveness. Organizational agility has thus primarily been considered to be constituted by dynamic adaptations in accordance to forces of the external environment. In contrast, this study finds that the retention of organizational agility during growth is an evolutionary process that is internally driven by placing indispensable value on the employees and by focusing on the organization itself, its desire and community. Retaining organizational agility is thus something that grows “from the inside and out”.

Background: The circular economy model is an essential theme in sustainable development research and a promising chance for companies to combine environmental and economic benefits. Nevertheless, a CE implementation was not realised in most companies to date. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to understand what hinders companies from becoming more circular and what measures need to be taken to initiate a CE implementation. Method: An embedded single case study methodology serves to explore the process of initiating a CE implementation, based on a firm within the manufacturing industry. Conclusion: Our research reveals the necessity of a pre-implementation phase before the CE implementation. The readiness of a company can be evaluated through a scoresheet that assesses the status quo. This scoresheet helps to estimate a potential urgency to achieve CE readiness. A pre-implementation sheet provides insights for firms to understand measures that need to be taken to reach readiness.

There has been serious concerns about the pace at which juvenile criminality isincreasing globally(National Academies Press, 2001).Young people are increasinglybecoming susceptible to a wide variety of misdemeanors; from substance abuse and addictionto murder (ibid). Studies have empirically described many triggers as the root cause ofjuvenile delinquency (Archer, 2000).Some criminologists have attributed these types ofmisdemeanors to the environments to which these adolescents are/have been subjected to(Wikstrom, 2004). On this basis, this research aims to assess the liability, if any, ofbystanders/observers and enablers/facilitators of juvenile delinquency. The study employed aqualitative approach in evaluating the role of bystanders and enablers in juveniledelinquency. The outcome revealed that the majority of bystanders and enablers are equallyas guilty as the delinquent youth. Three theories were used to rationalize these findings; theanomie-strain theory, situational action theory and self control theory ( Chainey & Ratcliffe,2005). As a result, the study recommends adequate parental guidance, in-person supervision,parental awareness, governmental inclusion, the provision of social infrastructures as well asequal opportunities, among others.

Rapidly increasing global environmental changes are causing disruptions in the natural environment and have resulted in emphasized importance of developing sustainable entrepreneurship to mitigate climate change. To do this, however, external conditions have been argued to stimulate new business opportunities, which have been reconceptualized as external enablers (Davidsson, 2015). This study will therefore investigate how combinations of external enablers can be understood and leveraged to facilitate new sustainable venture creation within one of the sectors with the potential to reverse climate change, the marine sector. Thus, the aim of this study is to assess the combinations of external enablers that facilitate venture creation within the marine sector. The study was conducted in accordance with the interpretivist approach, basing the data collection on multiple case studies. The case studies were based on secondary online data and semi-constructed interviews, where the data was later analyzed through a coding process according to Gioia et al., (2013). The study was set to follow an inductive approach.  The empirical findings show that the prominent external enabler combinations for sustainable ventures within the marine sector are of the regulatory, economic and sociocultural types which have a complementary relationship and act in symbiosis. The symbiosis is in turn affected by climate change as a fundamental enabling factor for sustainable ventures.

Research Background: Climate change poses a core threat to the current and future welfare of society. Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly susceptible to challenges associated with climate change, most of which are bound to have large-scale societal impacts. Fortunately, Grand Challenges (GCs) can also enable opportunities for sustainable entrepreneurship to emerge. As entrepreneurs work in larger interrelated ecosystems, it is noteworthy to explore the utilization of ecosystems to develop sustainable ventures that address GCs. Current research has not addressed the interplay between external enablers and entrepreneurial ecosystems, especially in the Sub-Saharan context. The focus of this study is to explore how sustainable entrepreneurs acted on GCs in the pursuit of venture opportunities, and how ecosystems were utilized to foster the development of entrepreneurial agents and their ventures. Research Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify how GCs facilitate sustainable entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa, given the interaction between entrepreneurs, their ecosystems, and climate change-associated GCs. Method: The research paradigm for this study follows critical realism. Meaning, we question the nature of reality as inherently multilayered and align with epistemic relativism. An explorative interview-based study was adopted for our methodology. We sampled our interview candidates purposively through the formation of several criteria. In total, we collected data from 20 semi-structured interviews through online platforms. We analyzed our data by interpreting principles of thematic analysis and the theory- building approach, to connect empirical themes to theoretical constructs. Conclusion: The results for this study show that sustainable entrepreneurs act on a wide variety of GCs. Within ecosystems, we noticed that sustainable development, cultural belief systems, educational infrastructure, governance, and resource accessibility influence the potential for ecosystems to develop. Specifically, we adopted three dimensions in which these pillars have influences: the entrepreneurial, communal, and structural level. The findings indicated that the scope of external enablers is fluid due to ecosystem interactions. Moreover, opacity and agency-intensity of enabling mechanisms can be reduced by developing entrepreneurial ecosystems. We also noted that entrepreneurs themselves can take on the role of ecosystem-builders. Our findings revised current understandings of sustainable entrepreneurship and redefined the concept to create a more inclusive label.

The purpose of this qualitative research was to acknowledge the gap in literature concerning the relationship between female leadership in a Swedish context with impostor syndrome. The focus was on analyzing whether impostor syndrome has an impact on the career progression of female leaders and how organizations can either exacerbate or mitigate the effects of suffering from impostor syndrome in the workplace.  In order to reach a conclusion aligned with the purpose and to respond to the conducted research questions, six semi-structured interviews were conducted with women in different leadership positions, operating within different companies and industries in Sweden. The interviews along with the theoretical framework allowed the authors to perform a thematic analysis in order to structure and analyze the gathered information.  The empirical data that was collected provided sufficient evidence for the authors to draw conclusions with regards to the posed research questions. It was concluded that impostor syndrome is a phenomenon that was frequently experienced among the female leaders, which could be confirmed in the literature. It could also be concluded that this was not a factor that had hindered them in their career progression. Moreover, the organizational support systems could be concluded to have a great impact in how the effects of impostor syndrome could be mitigated or further exacerbated.

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