Performance Effectiveness Appraisal, Performance Effectiveness Review as well as Coaching and training are crucial elements of the performance management process included in a set of managerial competencies required by managers in a deep level gold mine in South Africa. This dissertation provides a contemporary review of performance management and gold mining in a South African deep level gold mine context. It provides a theoretical framework for the processes of Performance Effectiveness Appraisal, Performance Effectiveness Review and Coaching and training as integral parts of effective performance management. It investigates if shared meaning exists between the views of the organisation’s managers and the views of the organisation as set apart in a System for People handbook to be used by managers in the organisation. Managerial competencies are discussed and compared with literature found. Following this, the responses from the participants are discussed. The responses are compared with literature reviews done and the view of the organisation. Performance management challenges that face the organisation in the future are investigated and proposals are made to the organisation management team and future research proposals are suggested, before concluding. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Business schools have been under scrutiny over the last few years with regard to the type of manager leaders that they produce. This is because the business sector has suffered significantly, both financially and in terms of global reputation due to the unethical conduct of those in management and leadership of the organisations. The scandals that rocked the world in recent times, from business entities such as Enron and Tiger Brands provide examples of the unethical behaviour in the day–to–day running of business and further bring forth the essential need for an in–depth study in the behaviour of the manager–leaders. These manager–leaders are said to be graduates from business schools around the world. Researchers and business schools have started to put emphasis on the importance of ethical behaviour in manager–leaders. Business schools in particular have introduced and included business law and ethics as one of the modules in the curriculum of the MBA program so as to inculcate the ethical conduct in the present and emerging manager–leaders in organisations. Therefore, this study is based on the evaluation of the ethical behaviour of the MBA students at a selected business school in South Africa. The subjects of this study (MBA students) were subjected to questionnaires that prompted their convictions with regard to ethical behaviour at personal (individual) level and on company level as well. The results of the study indicated that the MBA students at this selected business school are ethical in behaviour at both individual and company levels, hence complied with principles that are guidelines in the renowned King reports. However, a comparative study with other business schools will be necessary so as to measure the relative ethical behaviour of the MBA students at other business schools. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Performance Effectiveness Appraisal, Performance Effectiveness Review as well as Coaching and training are crucial elements of the performance management process included in a set of managerial competencies required by managers in a deep level gold mine in South Africa. This dissertation provides a contemporary review of performance management and gold mining in a South African deep level gold mine context. It provides a theoretical framework for the processes of Performance Effectiveness Appraisal, Performance Effectiveness Review and Coaching and training as integral parts of effective performance management. It investigates if shared meaning exists between the views of the organisation’s managers and the views of the organisation as set apart in a System for People handbook to be used by managers in the organisation. Managerial competencies are discussed and compared with literature found. Following this, the responses from the participants are discussed. The responses are compared with literature reviews done and the view of the organisation. Performance management challenges that face the organisation in the future are investigated and proposals are made to the organisation management team and future research proposals are suggested, before concluding. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Managerial work has been described as fragmented, action-oriented, and highly interpersonal, leaving limited room for formal planning and analysis. Even so, managers are expected to engage with accounting information for planning and analysing their area of responsibility. Accounting information has, however, been found to be tardy, aggregated, and incomplete, leading managers to rely on a wide set of additional informational resources. Still, managers’ doings and concerns tend to remain largely in the background in much management accounting research, which leaves us with limited knowledge of how accounting information comes into play in managers’ work. Moreover, technologies aimed at accommodating managers’ information needs are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and allow for timelier and more precise accounting information. This gradual transformation of technologies has led to questions concerning how management accounting is practised, and how it is related to accounting information systems. The aim of this dissertation is to identify roles of accounting information in managerial work in order to better understand the link between managerial work and management accounting systems. The dissertation consists of two volumes, each with three papers and a summary appraisal. The empirical material consists of interviews with a cross-sectional sample of mainly first-line managers, and a study of a construction firm including interviews with higher- and lower-level managers, observations of workshops where higher-level managers and staff discuss the management accounting systems, and internal documents. Overall, this dissertation suggests four roles of accounting information, based on its capacity to serve as representation, translation, key and perspective. Essentially, these roles reflect the ability of accounting information to both aggregate and disaggregate “reality”. The potential of each of these roles is shaped by managerial, organisational and technological issues, and is not always easily realised. The potential of these roles is particularly challenged in an environment with many local contexts. By accentuating what makes accounting information more and less valuable vis-à-vis other informational resources, this dissertation adds clarity to the emerging body of literature on managers’ situated use of accounting information, and to the debate on information technologies and management accounting.

Real options analysis has been recommended to identify and quantify opportunities where managerial flexibility can influence worth. However, real options models in the literature have become increasingly sophisticated, and managers have cited their reluctance to use such models due to their level of complexity and lack of transparency. Presented in this thesis is a real options model that can be easily incorporated into the current project selection methodology of a firm; the model uses managerial cash flow estimates to price real options on tangible investment opportunities in a financially consistent manner. Next, to demonstrate the application of real options analysis in practice, five real options models, including the proposed model, are applied to value a medical device project. The models all price the real option differently, due to the differences in their underlying assumptions, but they all yield the same investment conclusion: the medical device project has value.

Real options analysis has been recommended to identify and quantify opportunities where managerial flexibility can influence worth. However, real options models in the literature have become increasingly sophisticated, and managers have cited their reluctance to use such models due to their level of complexity and lack of transparency. Presented in this thesis is a real options model that can be easily incorporated into the current project selection methodology of a firm; the model uses managerial cash flow estimates to price real options on tangible investment opportunities in a financially consistent manner. Next, to demonstrate the application of real options analysis in practice, five real options models, including the proposed model, are applied to value a medical device project. The models all price the real option differently, due to the differences in their underlying assumptions, but they all yield the same investment conclusion: the medical device project has value.

In this dissertation, I study the influence of monitoring by institutional investors on corporate behavior within the context of CEO compensation-based incentives. I find that institutional investors provide an executive with higher levels of compensation sensitivity with respect to a firm’s equity price (Delta). In contrast to prior literature, however, once I control the dynamic nature of the data, institutional investors do not affect compensation sensitivity with respect to a firm’s equity risk (Vega). Instead, I find that institutional investors appear to influence the risk profile of firm through the firm’s investment, financing and diversification policy choices even after I control for the CEO’s compensation structure. The results suggest that compensation-related incentives to increase risk (i.e. vega) and monitoring by institutional investors are substitutes of each other in that both can offset the managerial incentives to reduce risk that stem from greater levels of compensation delta. These results are robust to potential endogeneity problems that may arise due to the dynamic nature of panel data.

This study was designed to explore the differences in the perception of sex role stereotypes in by 210 undergraduate physical education and sport students (from Metu, Gazi, Hacettepe, Ankara, BaSkent) for successful middle manager, for successful middle male manager, and successful middle female manager among female and male subjects through the administration of Schein Descriptive Index (SDI) and to provide a comprehensive look at the requsite managerial caharacteristics for male and female managers.as a reult, Skilled in Business Matter, Competitive, Component, Speedy Recovery From Emotional Disturbance, Ambitious,Aware of Feelings of Others, Objective, Helpful, Well-informed items means of successful middle manager was significantly different than the means of successful middle women managers for females.Ambitious, Leadership Ability, Well-informed, Skilled in Business Matter, Intelligent, Logical, Analytical Ability, Able to Separate Feelings From Ideas items means of successful middle manager was significantly different than the means of successful middle women managers for males. Moreover, male and female subjects seem to value almost similar characteristics as &quot / Characteristics&quot / and &quot / Not Characteristics&quot / . results indicated that, women were not rated as successful manager amd managerial characteristics were seen to characteristics of successful middle manager, more than successful female manager, also were seen to characteristics of successful managers more than women managers.

The study of career paths within organizations is an issue that has received strong attention in the theoretical literature of organizational economics and management1. From the empirical point of view, however, research in this topic is scarcer and less comprehensive. The gap has been caused to a large extent by the unavailability of data tracking worker's career moves in employee-level surveys and by the lack of information about career management policies in firm-level data. This thesis contributes to fill such hole. It investigates how workers' careers and their behavior as managers depend on the characteristics of the firms where they work and their own personal characteristics, with a strong emphasis in the role of human capital. The research is carried out using micro data at both worker and firm level, available only in relatively recent data sets. The interaction between accumulation of human capital and workers' employment horizons has been frequently recognized as a key issue in explaining why some firms maintain long-term relationships with their employees while others remain closer to what it could be considered spot-market labor contracting. There are nonetheless important factors that have been usually absent in the literature of organizations. This is the case of internal firm structures that may improve or discourage the interactions between different hierarchical levels, affecting eventually to the costs of job change involved in promotions. Both human capital and organization-relational aspects of career paths are objects of study of this thesis. First, it is analyzed how the characteristics of employers and the markets where they work affect the general or firm-specific nature of employees' human capital and, therefore, to the type of employment relationship held. Second, it is investigated how differences in employees' personal characteristics affect their career horizons, the management of their human capital and the type of career moves done. Finally, the effects of these factors on career path outcomes are examined, in terms of leadership behavioral differences among those arriving at managerial levels. A particular attention is paid the important differences between the careers of men and women that are also found in their managerial style. Overall, the research presented here sheds light on what career management schemes adapt better to different product and labor market circumstances. It opens as well a number of challenges for the study of human resources management and shows that population-wide surveys can be very useful tools to carry out empirical investigations in this area, usually dominated by narrower and less representative surveys.

"This thesis investigates the influence of company and executive characteristics on strategic alliance formation (decision to form alliances, alliance type selection and choice of alliance partners) and performance evaluation of alliances, in the Australian tourism industry sector of travel. The significance of forming strategic alliances as a way of achieving 'harambe' is emphasised throughout this thesis. 'Harambe' is a ki-Swahili term meaning "to pull together, or to work together or to pull the same rope together at the same time" in harmony. The idea here is that companies pool their resources together through strategic alliances to be able to achieve their strategic goals and objectives. The research focuses on three travel sub-sectors - travel agencies, tour operators and wholesalers and how these sub-sectors relate with those of transport and accommodation." - / Doctor of Philosophy