For the rational entrepreneur, the investment in the creation of a business plan should lead to some economic advantage in terms of measurable business value. Conversely, the absence of a business plan should lead to poor performance of the young enterprise. Given the ubiquity of business plans, the de facto accepted hypothesis holds that among a sample of entrepreneurs, those with business plans should outperform (e.g. survival, profit, sales, growth etc.) those without. In this study, a systematic 10-year literature review was conducted to assess the state of the empirical body of knowledge with regard to the entrepreneur's business plan. This review finds that empirical attempts to confirm the assumed relational causality in the direction from business planning to new venture performance have yielded findings that are mixed, contradictory, and inconclusive. In the absence of clear evidence to support arguments of economic rationale, researchers have argued the importance of testing alternative rationale to explain the ubiquity of the business plan. In this study, the theory of institutionalisation was tested as an alternative to economic rationale in predicting the likelihood of an entrepreneur developing a formal business plan. The specific setting for the research was South African information technology start-ups. A questionnaire was developed deriving constructs from prior studies in the domain. Entrepreneurs were approached directly, as well as through organisational stakeholders in the South African technology entrepreneurship environment. Respondents completed an online questionnaire, yielding a final sample of 80 valid responses. The profile of respondents was found to be generally consistent with other probabilistically-sampled studies in the population. Corresponding with the three institutional pressures, three hypotheses were tested. Support was found for coercive pressure originating from providers of finance. The study did not find support for the hypothesised mimetic behaviour among technology entrepreneurs (mimetic force), nor for the normative force hypothesised as resulting from a tertiary-level business education. Statistical regression analysis suggested that a range of wider factors appears to be influencing the South African technology entrepreneur's decision to write a business plan. This findings of this research offer practical implications for entrepreneurs, educators, providers of finance, and entrepreneurship researchers.

The concept of teleworking has been around for more than 40 years. Telework is commonly defined as the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by employees to perform their day-to-day activities while being away from the traditional office. Telework or telecommuting, as it is also known, has received a lot of attention from researchers and organisations over the years due to its many reported benefits. Literature on telework is extensive, covering a wide range of topics including the demographics of teleworkers, different societal, organisational and individual perspectives on telework as well as the role of technology in telework. Despite all of this attention, telework adoption rates have remained low over the years. In South Africa, telework adoption is particularly low when compared to the rest of the world. The majority of past telework research has been focused on the organisational aspects of telework and adoption factors from the worker's perspective are not well understood. Furthermore, the literature reflects that the Information Technology (IT) profession could benefit from remote work practices due to high levels of stress amongst IT workers. This study therefore attempted to answer the question, "What factors influence South African IT workers' intention to telework?". Using an existing research model based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), an explanatory research approach was followed with the objective of determining the influence of the TPB elements namely attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control on IT workers' intention to adopt telework. The model was tested by means of an online survey, for which a total of 120 valid responses were received. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods were used to analyse the data collected. The sample size was fairly small and the geographical location of survey respondents could not be reliably established. These factors impact on the generalisability of the findings, which is a limitation of the study. Analysis of the data revealed a number of interesting findings. IT workers' attitudes towards telework were found to have little bearing on their intention to adopt this style of work. Similarly, the influence of significant others (subjective norms) did not significantly influence IT workers' intention to telework. Instead, a key determining factor of the intention to telework was the perceived behavioural control of IT workers which was, in turn, determined mainly by the availability and cost of the technology that enables telework, the level of support for teleworking provided by employers and the level of self-efficacy experienced by these workers. These findings are in contrast to the results of prior research, supporting the idea that initial adoption and telework continuance behaviours are different. The results also suggest that the South African context of this study is potentially significant and that the cost of bandwidth is still a major inhibitor of telework amongst local IT workers. The implications of these findings are that management needs to improve IT workers' access to remote work technology and better support staff who wish to telework by providing them with financial support and training. Issues relating to company culture were identified as potential areas for future telework research. This research makes a contribution to theory by highlighting the importance of belief elicitation when applying the TPB to different contexts.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 286-307). / The study consulted literature from both academic and professional domains. None of the literature referred to has done any study on the impact of organisation politics on IT strategy. The research conducted empirical case studies in two South African organisations. The two organisations are different in terms of cultural and transformative settings. The study included the involvement of people, processes and technology in the development and implementation of IT strategy.

Teaching and learning have evolved over time as students desire to engage with technology as part of their learning process. Technological advances are introducing new possibilities for higher education institutions (HEIs). Developments in educational technologies as well as the need by HEIs to improve both the teaching and learning environment are contributing to the growth of learning analytics (LA). Research in LA has predominantly been exploratory in nature and a shift is needed for evaluative research that explores the impact and outcomes of LA on students, educators and the institution as a whole. Moreover, there is limited research on the use of LA at HEI in a South African context with most research focusing on the Global North and Australia. This study aimed to understand the state of LA at HEIs in South Africa (SA) by identifying barriers of use as well as future potential of the use of LA in informing decision making, predicting learner outcomes and improving the overall learning and experience. The study draws on the Technology-OrganisationEnvironment (TOE) framework and DeLone and McLean IS success model to develop a theoretical integrated model to understand the state of LA at HEI in order to gain insights on the barriers and drivers of use, as well as potential of more advanced LA at institutions. To meet the objective of the study and to test the model, data was collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with participants at four prominent HEIs in SA. It was important to have a diverse representaion of roles to gain a balanced view on the use of LA across institutions. A qualitative thematic analysis approach was used following a hermeanutic cycle in the analysis process. The outcome of the study showed that a big variety of data are currently being collected at HEIs within SA and the data is used for LA to varying degrees. These findings show that data is used for various decision-making purposes in order to improve learning and teaching. The data is also used to understand student behaviours in order to predict student outcomes and to meet student support needs. Barriers and challenges exist that have impacted the adoption of LA; these include technological, organisational and environmental challenges such as quality of systems, culture to use data and ethical concerns. Opportunities for more advanced use of LA also exist which are econcouraging institutions to prioritise LA initiatives in their drive of being more data-driven. The main contributions that this study makes is to bring an SA context to a growing field of research and implementation of LA. This study demonstrates the challenges that are unique to SA in the adoption of LA within an online learning perspective as well as highligting challenges that are similar to other global institutions.

Within the South African context, there is clear legislation and policy advocacy on the importance of community participation in facilitating inclusive decision-making. Statutory frameworks require municipalities to inform citizens of their rights and encourage them to contribute to municipal initiatives. Public participation and access to information are critical elements of good governance. However, implementing the policies is not always executed as intended. This can be attributed to various reasons such as the lack of resources, institutional capacity, poor administration of government resources and redressing historical backlogs of service delivery. Research also suggests that citizens feel excluded from the decision-making processes as they lack access to information to participate constructively. Governance has become a popular concept in literature, especially where the focus is on reducing inequality, reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development in developing countries, and consequently considers the relationships between government and civil society. The intention of “good governance” is to strengthen accountability and responsiveness of policies and strategies by enabling communities to engage and have an influential voice, especially on decisions that affect their livelihood. This research aims to examine how information sharing practices between municipalities and communities affect good governance. One theme that consistently emerges in the review of the legislation and policy documents is citizenry's inclusion in the municipal decision-making process. Public participation has an influential role in good governance. However, there is a gap in the importance of information sharing and how to share this information to facilitate effective public participation. Thus, this study integrated the principles of good governance and Information Value Chain to determine how municipalities use and disseminate information to their communities and use citizen knowledge to improve good governance. The study included reviewing various policy documents and literature, semi-structured interviews with municipal staff and focus groups with community members, follow-up meetings, workshops, and observations. By combining the Theory of the Information Value Chain with the Good governance Principles Framework, data could be analysed by categorising data into themes.

E-government has become de rigueur in public service delivery. Attendant to the growing adoption is the need to establish the extent to which investments are yielding desired outcomes and how the services can be improved. E-government evaluation is, therefore, an important research problem— more so in developing countries, where resources are scarce, and the opportunity cost is higher. This, notwithstanding, there is a paucity of research. This research explored the “lay of the land”, to describe e-government outcomes evaluation practice in developing countries. South Africa was selected as context; the sample consisted of public sector employees. Practice theory was adopted to frame e-government evaluation as what people do. A two-phased sequential explanatory mixed methods strategy, supported by post-positivism, was employed. This allowed examination of the different aspects of practice— the tangible (e.g., activities) and the intangibles (e.g., affective issues). In the quantitative phase, questionnaire data from 106 public employees (i.e., managers and non-managers from IT, Evaluation, and Other backgrounds) was analysed with factor and cluster analyses techniques to identify the important elements which described e-government outcomes evaluation practice and the patterns of performance. This was followed by a qualitative phase in which interview transcripts of 12 participants drawn from the sample of the preceding phase, four from each background (i.e., two from management and nonmanagement respectively), were analysed with content analysis to help understand the results of the quantitative phase. The findings show an inadequate organizational capacity to evaluate e-government outcomes and use the results. The primary purpose of evaluation is compliance, and organizational outcomes are mostly measured. While there may be some degree of use (e.g., learning, i.e., conceptual) recommendations may not be implemented. Furthermore, there were significant differences among participants; evaluation and IT managers with the requisite expertise were likely to have a positive perception of e-government outcomes evaluation practice. This research adds value to e-government outcomes evaluation research and practice in developing countries, and also to the methodological development of practice theory in Information Systems (IS). Consistent with research on practice, recommendations are drawn to help e-government evaluation stakeholders improve future practice and, thereby, ameliorate the high e-government failure rate. The findings shed light on current practice, e.g., what is done well and challenges, and add to the otherwise sparse body of knowledge in the domain under investigation. A deterrent to the adoption of practice theory is the paucity of theoretical and conceptual frameworks. This research illustrates how Schatzki's theory can be applied to investigate an IS problem and helps remedy the dearth of empirical research on practice. Furthermore, it contributes to the current effort to develop mixed methods in IS— and practice research in general. The agenda for future research can help advance the, hitherto, under researched domain of e-government evaluation in developing countries.

Multi-channel retail banking is a novel banking approach, one which encompasses traditional banking approaches as well as modern internet based banking innovations. South Africa (SA) has the potential market to ensure the success of alternative banking strategies, which in turn would lead to better quality banking services. This study is of importance to banks, providing them with a better understanding of the consumer's interaction within the banking environment. The main objective of the study is to investigate the adoption of multi-channel banking in SA and to develop a theory that explains this phenomenon. Identifying these factors may allow the banks to ultimately improve the quality and reach of services of the channels independently or collectively. This study is conducted within an interpretivist paradigm under the guidance of an inductive approach. The purpose of this combination is to allow for the exploration of the phenomenon through the use ~f semi-structured interviews to gather data from only individuals who had bank accounts. The gathered data was analysed employing the techniques available through grounded theory methodology. Numerous concepts evolved through the analysis of the data and through the open coding technique. The main results showed that the consumer's decision making process and their continual growth of knowledge were highly influenced by varying concepts such as their banking needs, received experiences, the associated costs, preference of channel, the associated convenience and the received satisfaction of the respective channels of choice. The decision making process included the categories of channel evaluation and channel choice. The concepts within these categories were determined as being highly influenced among the collection of identified concepts. With their choices changing as their circumstances changed the channels were not thought of as independent, but rather a collective from which the consumer could choose from. This demonstrates the existence of the phenomenon of multi-channel banking.

The development of electronic money and virtual currencies has led to the growing presence of bitcoin and other blockchain based, decentralized cryptocurrencies). The most popular of these cryptocurrencies being Bitcoin, a globally traded cryptocurrency, evidence of which is prevalent in South Africa with the formation of Bitcoin exchanges such as Luno in 2012. The advancement of Bitcoin in South Africa presents a number of opportunities for a number of role players in the financial, technology, retail and service sectors. However successful, wide spread adoption may also be hampered by various actors such as governments, financial institutions, merchants and the behaviour of end users. The usage of Bitcoin in developing countries for especially for international remittances and transfers has shown significant benefits such as lower transaction fees. The already prevalent use of mobile money in developing countries may aid Bitcoin's adoption. Mobile banking functions such as sending international remittances could easily be replaced by using a Bitcoin wallet, which offers much lower transaction costs than traditional banking services, especially when doing low value. It is believed that Bitcoin adoption and internet banking share parallels in that both involve the adoption of an innovating technology and both are susceptible to the effects of social phenomena and personal bias. This study investigates the adoption of Bitcoin in South Africa, a developing African country, from an end user's perspective. Importance will be placed on identifying and assessing challenges that may inhibit the widespread adoption of Bitcoin amongst end users, as well as drivers that may promote Bitcoin's adoption in South Africa. A significant finding is that end users' adoption decisions towards Bitcoin were mainly driven by the users propensity to hoard bitcoin in order to make financial gains. In addition, result demonstrability was also shown to be a key driver influencing the end users adoption decision. A modified version of the innovation diffusion theory is suggested in the discussion based on the findings of this study.

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