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The aim of this study was to suggest ways to use enterprise risk management (ERM) effectively towards achieving strategic objectives at East London Industrial Development Zone. The results of the research will contribute to the set of tools which business can utilise in effective business planning and achieve sustainability of enterprises. Enterprise risk management provides stakeholders with reasonable assurance that management has taken due care in drawing up strategies aligned with their appetite for risk. The objective was to investigate the utilisation of Enterprise Risk Management at East London Industrial Development Zone. The literature review revealed shortcomings of the traditional risk management strategy. Examples of the shortcomings are its preoccupation with hazard risks and its disconnection with other functions in an organisation. ERM has emerged as the organisation wide approach to the handling of risk. Effectively integrated with strategy-setting and performance management, ERM strengthens opportunity-seeking behaviour by helping directors and managers develop the confidence that they truly understand the risks inherent in the organization’s strategy and have the capabilities in place to manage and monitor those risks. The assessment of risks after the strategy formulation process results in defective risk management. The result could be strategic objectives that are unrealistic and risk management that is just an appendage to performance management. The empirical study consisted of face-to-face interviews using semi-structured questionnaires. The respondents were Business Unit Managers at East London Industrial Development Zone who advised on current practice of ERM in the organization. The main findings of the empirical investigation revealed that ERM started with organisational survival in mind but ended up being a compliance activity. Also, ERM is under-resourced as there are no dedicated ERM financial and human resources. The organization’s unstructured and informal approach to ERM could place the strategic objectives at risk. Recommendations conclude the investigation and address the shortcomings and improvements that can be made to the utilisation of ERM within the organization. The recommendations are ensuring strong commitment towards ERM and widening the participation of all employees in ERM; developing an ERM road map; allocation of resources to ERM initiative; development of a business case for ERM; training of all managers and all employees on ERM; and focusing on low-hanging return, which may result in quicker realisation of the value added by ERM to the organization.

The aim of this study was to suggest ways to effectively utilise Activity-Based Costing and Activity-Based Managment within Eskom Transmission Southern Grid to improve decision making towards improved business and financial performance. The ultimate purpose was to assist managers and staff to implement ABC and ABM effectively for improved business and financial performance. The focus was on the following objective: To suggest ways to effectively utilise ABC & ABM within Eskom Transmission Southern Grid as to improve decision making and business financial performance. Given the selection of management tools available, instruments such as ABC and ABM are usually not implemented alone, but may be supported by one or more approaches. For this reason ABC and ABM are contrasted with several other popular instruments mentioned in the literature. The instruments are: • The value chain; • Continuous improvement; • The theory of constraints; and • Total quality management. Insight will be given to provide managers with more accurate information regarding maintenance for the Grid and tools in identifying critical bottlenecks. By applying the TOC, TQM and continuous improvement strategies, managers will be able to make improved decisions, leading to improved financial performance in the Eskom Transmission Southern Grid. iii The literature study revealed that ABC and ABM prove to be the cornerstone for informed decision making. Since organisations are highly dependent on quality information to make these informed decisions, ABC and ABM reorientate the organisation towards understanding and managing work processes thus impacting financial performance positively. ABC and ABM trace the cost of activities such as engineering and procurement to how maintenance benefits from these activities. The empirical study consisted of a structured questionnaire distributed to a sample population of engineers and managers in Eskom Transmission Southern Grid in Port Elizabeth. It was aimed at gathering information about the use of ABC and ABM within the Grid. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with financial staff in the Grid and a focus group interview with engineering staff was done. The main findings of the empirical investigation revealed that management and staff lack insight into the use of ABC and ABM and how it can be integrated with existing improvement systems within the organisation. This study is concluded with a number of recommendations. These recommendations address the shortcomings and improvements that can be made to improve the utilisation of ABC and ABM within the organisation. The recommendations address the following: • Ensuring full commitment towards organisational goals and broadening the endorsement of ABC within the organisation; • Highlighting the importance of financial performance throughout the Grid; • Training of Managers, finance staff and engineers is required for proper execution of the ABC system; • Implementers need skills and know-how of the ABC and ABM system ensuring full utilisation; • The main cost drivers are identified, prioritised and efforts channelled into these activities; • Tools such as the Theory Of Constraints and Total Quality Management from the proposed model would assist the Grid in identifying the bottlenecks of a system correctly, thus know explicitly the amount of slack capacity of each activity available during a specific time period.

The thesis comprises of two essays. Although the two essays deal with somewhat different situations and use different approaches, both of them essentially examine the problem of making decisions that affect some group of individuals. The first essay is on moral hazard and looks at the principal's problem in a principal-agent(s) free-rider problem in which, unlike most existing work, the principal is not precluded from participating in the production process. Furthermore, there are no uncertainties, but moral hazard is caused by joint production which renders the action of each individual in the production process unobservable. A multi-stage extensive game in which only the principal can propose the output sharing rule determines both the set of individuals who actually participate in the joint production process and the output sharing rule. The main conclusion we draw in the first essay is that, when designing the optimal output sharing rule, the principal need not look for any output sharing rule more sophisticated than the linear or piecewise linear rules we frequently observe. We also characterize the condition under which the principal chooses to take part in production, and conclude that the issue of mitigation of moral hazard and sustainability of efficiency crucially hinges on whether the principal actually participates in production or not. More concretely, we show that moral hazard dissipates completely whenever the principal does not participate in production, however, even then she does not achieve as much welfare as in the First Best situation if her best option in the First Best situation is to take part in production. The second essay is in stochastic social choice theory. In a paper published in 1986 in Econometrica, Pattanaik and Peleg formulated stochastic analogues for each of Arrow's axioms and concluded that the stochastic social choice functions that satisfy their axioms are essentially randon dictatorships when individuals have strict preferences. More precisely, there is a unique weight associated with each individual such that the vector of these individual weights has the properties of a probability distribution over the set of individuals, and, given any preference profile and any feasible set, the probability that a feasible alternative is chosen is equal to the sum of the weights of those individuals who have this alternative as their best feasible alternative. We extend the analysis of Pattanaik and Peleg by allowing individuals to have weak preferences. As in their paper, it turns out that the probabilistic versions of Arrow's condition simply that there are individual weights. However, now, given a preference profile and a feasible set, we partition the society so that any two individuals from different elements of the partition have no common best feasible alternatives, but the set of best feasible alternatives of each individual in an element of the partition overlaps with that of some other individual in the same element. Using this partition, it is shown that the only restriction on the stochastic social choice function is that the sum of the weights of all individuals belonging to the same element in the partition is equal to the probability that some alternative which is best in the feasible set for one of these individuals is chosen. When everyone has unique best feasible alternatives, the rules characterized here reduce to those of Pattanaik and Peleg. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

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The general purpose of this study was to examine one approach to the study of the relationship of personality variables to expectation theories of gambling. The Coombs and Bezembinder (1964) method of testing expectation theories of gambling behaviour was used to determine how many, among a group of 77 subjects, obeyed each of four expectation theories. These four expectation theories were: EV theory, assuming the maximization of the product of objective prize values and actual probabilities of winning; EU theory, assuming maximization of the product of subjective prize values and actual probabilities of winning; SEV theory, assuming the maximization of the product of objective prize values and subjective probabilities of winning; and SEU theory, assuming the maximization of the product of subjective value of the prize and the subjective probability of winning. The Coombs and Bezembinder method consists of comparing an estimate of an individual's consistency of choices independent of expectation theory assumptions with estimates of consistency under assumptions basic to each of the four expectation theories. A lower value of the consistency estimate under assumptions of a given expectation theory than the value calculated independently of any expectation theory assumptions leads to rejection of that particular theory as a model for the subject's behavior. The Coombs and Bezembinder technique for determining whether an individual obeys the four expectation theories leads to the prediction of an ordering of the expectation theories with respect to the number of subjects who do not satisfy them. The procedure in the present study involved the presentation of 96 pairs of one-outcome gambles to 77 subjects in an introductory psychology class. A subject was required on each pair to choose between a gamble combining high risk with a large prize and a gamble combining a low risk with a small prize. It was found that EV theory was rejected for 57 subjects, EU theory for 31 subjects, SEV theory for 26 subjects and SEU theory for 14 subjects. The hypothesis of monotonicity in the number of rejections for the two sequences SEU-SEV-EV and SEU-EU-EV was accepted. A second hypothesis, that a higher proportion of females will obey the expectation theories than will males, was rejected. The subjects were subdivided into high and low anxious and high and low defensive groups groups on the basis of scores obtained on the Alpert and Haber Test Anxiety Scale and the Crowne and Marlowe Defensiveness Scale. An examination of the data was sufficient to reject the hypothesis that more low anxious-low defensive and high anxious-high defensive subjects would obey the four expectation theories than would subjects who were either low anxious-high defensive or high anxious-low defensive. There were, however, some statistically significant results obtained on the basis of several ad hoc analyses. Fewer high defensive males than low defensive males appeared to obey SEV theory. Furthermore, fewer males who were either high anxious-high defensive or low anxious-low defensive obeyed SEU and SEV theory than did males who were either low anxious-high defensive or high anxious-low defensive. On the basis of these results, it was recommended that further research be conducted on the relationships of personality variables to expectation theories of gambling. It was noted that the use of the Tversky method of testing expectation theories would permit the simultaneous examination of two approaches to the relationship of personality variables to decision making (personality variables versus propensity for risk and personality variables versus rationality of decision). Finally, with respect to technique, it was recommended that better ways of assessing personality variables be found and the subjects be fully trained and run individually through the experiment. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

This study was an exploratory study of how teachers, when faced with classroom problems which are ill-defined problems, identify and interpret the student's point-of-view. The extent to which the concept of "teacher as problem finder" may describe those teachers who have the structures and strategies necessary for teaching from a developmental perspective was also examined. The non-random sample consisted of 27 primary and intermediate level teachers who participated in district-sponsored in-service courses designed to introduce them to a developmental perspective on education. Participants were asked to complete 'The Student Anecdotes Task' and a questionnaire on their background and experience. Teachers' responses to four questions which accompanied each anecdotal task were rated according to cognitive process variables associated with problem finding and subsequent problem solving. These included: problem formulation, integrative complexity, quality of point-of-view and developmental teaching strategies. Additional variables of interest to the study included, concern for problem finding and several demographic variables. The results suggested that the variables of problem formulation, integrative complexity and quality of point-of-view as well as the developmental teaching strategies may affect how teachers identify and interpret the student's point-of-view in ill-defined problem situations. Implications for teacher education and studies of teacher thinking were discussed. The need for clinical interviews augmented by classroom observations was emphasized for future studies. Several research questions, related to the cognitive process variables identified in this study to affect the teacher's ability to teach from a developmental perspective, were generated. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

An objective method to blend wines for standardizing flavor quality was developed. Aroma volatiles of varietal and white stock wines were analyzed at 6°C and 37°C by headspace gas chromatography with cryofocussing. Pattern similarity constants of the chromatographic profiles were entered into the simplex optimization program which determined the best blending ratios of wines to simulate the target wine. Thirteen and 23 vertices were required to give the optimum response for trials 1 and 2, respectively. For both trials the computer optimized blends could not be differentiated from the target wines by a sensory taste panel consisting of both untrained and expert judges. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

In recent years researchers interested in family decision making have argued for the need to apply a conceptual framework to the study of parental decision making about child-rearing issues. This study is an attempt to construct a theory-based model of parental decision-making strategies. Two theoretical approaches were employed; a structural-developmental approach to provide an understanding of parental cognition, and an information processing approach to the study of decision-making strategies. Previous research has demonstrated that pressure of time and task complexity were important in influencing the selection and use of information. These two factors were manipulated by the researcher. A model of parental decision-making strategies was proposed and tested in a pilot study. The decision was made to reduce the number of variables to those which demonstrated the potential to make a significant contribution to an understanding of parental decision making. These variables were tested in the main study. Sixty mothers participated in the study. They represented a wide range of socio-economic and educational backgrounds as well as number of years of parenting experience and age. Participants completed Newberger’s Level of Parental Awareness Interview and four decision tasks about two childrearing issues. The decision tasks were presented on information boards. The model of parental decision-making strategies was tested using multivariate analysis of variance with repeated measures. Significant effects were obtained for level of parental awareness, pressure of time, task complexity and number of years of formal education. The reduced model explained much of the variance in parental decision-making strategies (71%). Specific hypotheses concerning level of parental awareness and information use were supported. The results inform theory and practice. Support was found for the theory-based model and for Liben’s view of a rapprochement between developmental theory and information-processing theory. Parents with more knowledge about parenting used less information and more variability in their decision making. Support was found for Newberger’s measure and construct. Practical implications for parent education were curricula described. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This is a study of wine in antiquity. An attempt to describe the spatial diffusion of winemaking in ancient times and to acknowledge the principal factors which spurred that diffusion has produced a study which is simple in structure, but wide-ranging in temporal and geographical compass as well as in its topical diversity. Basically, it consists of two sections, corresponding to the dual preoccupation of diffusion and function. Part I traces winemaking's diffusion from its likely beginnings to the end of the Roman Empire. Although casual Palaeolithic fermentation was probably practised, organised winemaking awaited the systematic viticulture which arrived with the Neolithic, From a generally agreed origin in Armenia, winemaking's story is followed through a series of lands: Babylonia and Assyria, Egypt, Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, Greece, Italy, and the Roman Empire in Africa and Europe. The oenological variety of these lands is made apparent. Major patterns of wine trading and their influence or lack of it on winemaking's spread are studied. What emerges from this account is the startling vigour of this diffusion story, indicative of the high esteem in which ancient man held wine. Part II attempts to identify the reasons for such esteem in order to understand the diffusion momentum of winemaking. The utility of wine to the ancients is examined systematically in some detail. The following themes are treated: wine for the body, that is, wine as liquid, wine as food, wine as medicine (and aphrodisiac); wine for recreational drinking--its value to the individual and its role in society; wine for religious observance and man's existential well-being. An endeavour is made to avoid mere cataloguing of examples in favour of assessing wine's role in these various domains. At every turn, the great importance of the beverage in ancient life becomes apparent. A wide range of writing—ancient and modern, primary and interpretative—has been culled for information, including materials drawn from the biological, medical, and social sciences, technology, archaeology and epigraphy, art history, classical literature, linguistics, comparative religion, and Biblical exegesis. Even so, it would be unwise to consider the present examination more than an introduction to a rich and complex theme in the history of Western man. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate