Every year, more and more management positions are being filled by engineers and other technical personnel in spite of dual or parallel path systems for promotions in many companies. In spite of the centrality of engineers and management in industrial organizations and modern society, engineers are generally viewed to be unsuccessful in management roles due to the following shortcoming of skills: inadequate managerial education during engineering studies, administrative skills, interpersonal skills, personality and career orientation, management knowledge. This research argues that there is a difference in leadership style between experienced and inexperienced engineers in South Africa. It was found that experienced engineers in Eskom are more transformational and more transactional compared to inexperienced post-graduated engineering students at the Rand Afrikaans University. To demonstrate this in the study, the researcher used the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire to identify leadership style. The argument is substantiated by the results of a statistical analysis of leadership style for experienced and inexperienced engineers. The findings of this research indicate the theory that successful managers tend to grow into their jobs over an extended period (Bennett, 1996 and Sedge, 1985). The findings also support the arguments of O’Connor (1994) and Badaway (1995) that engineers have no typical career path to prepare them for the management role. It is therefore imperative that inexperienced engineers prepares themselves for management and obtain knowledge about management and development management skills during their formal studies. / Dr. L. Naude

M.Comm.

Corporate diversification continues to be an important phenomenon in the modern business world. More than thirty years of research on diversification suggests that the degree of relatedness among a firm's business units is a factor that can affect firm performance, but the true effect of diversification relatedness on firm performance is still inconclusive. The purpose of this dissertation is to shed more light on this inconclusive association. However, attention is focused on the performance implications of individual diversification actions (e.g., acquisitions and joint ventures) rather than on the overall performance of firms with different levels of diversification. A non-experimental, longitudinal analysis of secondary data was conducted on over 450 unique acquisitions and on more than 210 joint ventures. Results suggest that even when individual diversification actions rather than entire business portfolios are examined, an inverted curvilinear association between diversification relatedness and performance is likely to emerge. This pattern is observed in both acquisitions and joint ventures. However, the association between diversification relatedness and performance in acquisitions is moderated by the level of industry adversity, though factors such as corporate coherence and heterogeneous experience do not moderate the association between diversification relatedness and performance. This study augments the body of knowledge on diversification and adds refinement to the traditional curvilinear finding regarding relatedness. By studying acquisitions and joint ventures independently, the results reveal differences in both slope and inflection points that suggest the relative impact of relatedness may vary depending on the mode of diversification.

This study seeks to understand whether there exists a relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance (FP) and whether this is applicable in the context of the South African metals and engineering industry. An exploratory quantitative study of 125 SMEs and large firms in the metals and engineering industry was undertaken in 2012 to investigate the existence of the relationship between EO and FP. EO is measured using the Hughes&Morgan (2007) EO scale which incorporated the five dimensions of Lumpkin&Dess (1996). The Hughes&Morgan (2007) EO scale is used to study the independent effects of these multi-dimensions on FP. A Chi-square test is used to test the significance independence of the relationship between the multi-dimensions of EO and FP. This cross-section study finds out that there is convincingly a moderate to strong relationship between EO and FP. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Les trois chapitres de cette thèse étudient les choix financiers des ménages au cours de leur vie. Le premier s’intéresse à la décision de devenir un entrepreneur, le second au choix d’investir en bourse et le troisième à la valeur des droits à la retraite.Dans le premier chapitre, j’utilise des données administratives françaises sur les entrepreneurs créateurs d’emplois pour estimer un modèle de cycle de vie dans lequel des individus averses au risque peuvent créer une entreprise et retourner vers l’emploi salarié. J’estime que les bénéfices inobservés de l’entrepreneuriat représentent 6 100 euros par an, soit 67 000 sur la durée de vie d’une entreprise. L’option de retourner vers le salariat vaut, quant à elle, 82 000 euros pour les nouveaux entrepreneurs.Dans le second chapitre, j’estime un modèle de choix de portefeuille qui prend en compte la relation entre les rendements du marché boursier et l’asymétrie des chocs idiosyncratique de revenue. La cyclicité de cette asymétrie peut expliquer pourquoi les ménages jeunes ou à la richesse modestes investissent peu en bourse, et pourquoi la part de leur richesse investie en action croit jusqu’à l’âge de la retraite.Dans le troisième chapitre, je calibre un modèle de choix de portefeuille dans lequel le marché du travail est celui des actions sont cointegrés. J’estime que l’équivalent certain des droits à la retraites pour les ménages salariés est de 46% inférieur à la somme des paiements annualisés au taux sans risque. Au niveau national, la valeur ajustée des droits à la retraite est de 19.6 trillions de dollars, soit 37% de moins que la valeur non-ajustée de 31 trillions. / The three chapters of this thesis study households’ financial decisions over the life-cycle. The first chapter focuses on the decision to become an entrepreneur, the second on the choice to invest in stock market and the third on the value of pension entitlements.In the first chapter, I use French administrative data on job-creating entrepreneurs to estimate a life-cycle model in which risk-averse individuals can start businesses and return to paid employment. I find that unobserved benefits represent 6,100 euros per year, summing up to 67,000 over the average entrepreneurial spell. The option to return to paid employment is worth 82,000 euros to new entrepreneurs.In the second chapter, I estimate a life-cycle model of portfolio choices that incorporates the relationship between stock market returns and the skewness of idiosyncratic income shocks. The cyclicality of skewness can explain low stock market participation among young households with modest financial wealth and why the equity share of participants slightly increases until retirement.In the third chapter, I calibrate a life-cycle model in which the stock and labor markets are cointegrated and Social Security benefits are wage-indexed. I find that the certainty equivalent of Social Security for working households is 46% lower than the sum of future cash flows discounted at the risk-free rate and negative for young households. At the national scale, the risk-adjusted value of Social Security entitlements is 19.6 trillion dollars, which is 37% lower than the unadjusted value of 31 trillion dollars.

The new knowledge economy has created a global interest on the valuation of intellectual capital as well as its impact on firm performance and value. Developing economies have relatively only begun to investigate this relationship and progress has already been made in South Africa by a few researchers. The purpose of this study is to add to this investigation by exploring the relationship between intellectual capital and firm performance for South African listed firms in intellectual capital-intensive industries. A gap exists in South African research regarding the long-term impact of intellectual capital on firm performance. This relationship is important to define as firms may well make inappropriate decisions based on short-term relationships that do not create long-term value. This study applies a lag model in an aim to investigate this relationship in addition to the short-term relationship that exists between intellectual capital and firm performance. The study involves a quantitative analysis of data collected from firms in intellectual capital-intensive industries and makes use of the VAIC model developed by Ante Pulic to value intellectual capital. Measures of firm performance used are return on assets, total asset turnover and market capitalization. This study also makes use of panel data covering 62 JSE listed companies over 10 years. Empirical results show mixed outcomes regarding the relationship between intellectual capital and firm performance for both short-term models and lagged models. In some instances, no association was observed between intellectual capital and performance.

This paper investigates the impact of related party transactions on a firm’s operating performance and market-based performance, as well as the impact of institutional ownership on the use of related party transactions. Using a sample of 1218 deals from S&P1500 firms from 2007 to 2018, we propose and examine three relevant hypotheses: (a) related party transactions, especially, “Red-flag” related party transactions are negatively related to firm’s operating performance, (b) related party transactions, especially, “Red-flag” related party transactions are negatively related with firm’s marketbased performance, (c) institutional ownership is negatively related with related party transactions. In summary, we do not find a significant relationship between related party transactions and firm’s operating performance, such as ROA, Profit Margin and COGS. As for firm’s market-based performance, we found related party transactions are positively related with Tobin’s-Q, but are not significantly related with 12-months buy and hold abnormal return. Finally, we do not find any significant relationship between overall institutional investors and RPTs, but we find short-horizon institutional investors reduce the use of related party transactions, but long-horizon institutional investors do not limit the use of RPT

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 32-34). / According to the Competition Act of South Africa, proposed mergers, if rejected on the grounds of anti-competitive effects as well as the efficiency considerations, may be passed on certain public interest grounds. The fourth public interest clause potentially allows mergers to be passed should the merged firm become more able to compete in international markets. This paper interprets the clause to refer to a relationship between firm size and exports, and investigates this supposed relationship and, in so doing, the validity of the clause. It is found that firm size is positively related to export propensity, the likelihood of exporting any output. However, firm size is found to be unrelated to the intensity of exporting, the proportion of output that is exported by the firm. This paper covers new areas of research, and its conclusions call into question the inclusion of the relevant public interest clause in the Competition Act.

This dissertation is on sonic surveillance in the neoliberal context and its implication for privacy, agency, sovereignty, ownership and control. This research focuses on the social, political and ethical conceptions of privacy through musical consumption and sonic practices in the United States. I investigate non-creative recording practices in neoliberal life and identify the listening practices of surveillance capitalism to better understand how power circulates through sound. Through a multi-sited ethnography, I conduct three case studies on the recording and listening capacity of technological devices of everyday life in order to theorize what I term “the neoliberal ear”– a twenty-first century mode of listening to the world embedded into surveillance capitalism. I analyze three sonic tools of surveillance capitalism: streaming service Spotify, Smart Home device Amazon Echo, and Smart City communication hub LinkNYC. These technologies, I argue, embody and promote neoliberal ideology, and the companies that produces them operate within a neoliberal mode of governance allowed by public policies. This dissertation is interdisciplinary in scope and operates at theoretical crossings of sound and power, technology and cultural practices, and disciplinary crossings of music, law and computer science. I draw from, and build connections between; sound studies, ethnomusicology, legal literature and scholarship on copyright and privacy, surveillance studies, science and technology studies, and discourses on AI and ethics, to form theories of sound and power in surveillance capitalism.

This thesis investigates the cultural politics of taste in contemporary food media of Hong Kong through the lens of foodie stylistics on Instagram. By bearing on the semiotic theory and analysis by Roland Barthes, this research seeks to closely examine the mythmaking of taste in foodie criticism--the food and restaurant review written by foodies on social media platform. The theory will be used to spell out the layered meaning of foodie criticism: a linguistic depiction of food, visual stylistic of writing about taste, tactics of gaining voice of authority by foodie critics and their intention of writing. Considering taste as a cultural and social construct, the present research examines the pivotal role of foodie critics as mythmakers that render and stylize taste on Instagram, which mythologizes the intention of writing and complicates how voice of authority can be accumulated and how monopolized power of food media corporate can be further expanded invisibly. Through semiotic analysis, how taste is represented and informed by the mythmaker linguistically, how food trends are set stylistically to attract and affect the audience, as well as how attraction accumulates the voice of authority and engenders problems of self-branding, commercialization and collusion will become apparent. Finally, the findings of this pilot research of Hong Kong foodies will contribute to the understanding of cultural politics of contemporary food criticism media in the social media era.