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Organisational culture is widely celebrated as a legitimate source of corporate success. The study aimed to investigate the possible relationship between organisational culture and performance among four departments within Liberty Life’s Operations division. The objectives were twofold: The first was to investigate which culture was dominant in each department. Information from the administration of Wallach’s (1983) organisational culture index questionnaire to measure the existing organisational culture in the various departments was obtained from a sample of 170 employees in Liberty Life. The second was to assess how the dominant culture affected the department’s performance in terms of adhering to the agreed service level agreement. Daily service level agreement adherence results for each department were used as the performance measure. The findings from the research indicated that departments with an innovative culture had a lower percentage of cases outside the agreed service level agreement than the departments with a bureaucratic or supportive culture. Recommendations with regard to changing organisational culture to support high adherence to service level agreement are also discussed. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The Base of the Pyramid (BoP), the world’s four billion poorest people, represents an opportunity for large companies to grow their revenue. However, the challenges in the BoP require organisations to adopt an entrepreneurial orientation in order to be successful. Entrepreneurship within an existing organisation, known as intrapreneurship, requires the prevalence of certain internal organisational factors. This study sought to establish if the internal organisation factors that support intrapreneurship were prevalent in BoP business units; to establish the limitations/ shortcomings in this regard and to establish the changes required to further support intrapreneurship. A review of the intrapreneurship literature highlighted three prominent internal organisational factors that support intrapreneurship, management support, autonomy/work discretion and reward/reinforcement, which formed the scope of the study. A list of characteristics describing the three internal organisational factors was developed from literature. Expert interviews were conducted to obtain perspective on how the three internal organisation factors exhibit themselves in BoP business units. The results of the study confirmed the prevalence of the three internal organisational factors in BoP business units, highlighted the limitations/ shortcomings in terms of supporting intrapreneurship and the changes required to the internal organisational factors to further support intrapreneurship. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study explores the hitherto unexamined role of national, cultural, societal and historical dynamics of power and privilege in the identity work of the lowest level of managers in organisations. This study revealed that so-called ‘post-apartheid’ South African organisations remain sites for perpetuating social injustice through physical vestiges of segregation as well as complex societal-organisational interdiscursive practices that serve to maintain an unequal distribution of power, social oppression and exclusion. Within this context, first level managers expressed their managerialism variously through contested and coercive agentic strategies of power and resistance, while finding themselves implicated and relationally complicit in invidious discursive practices, veiled as post-apartheid speak. Their social location at the ‘power margin’ between management and working classes educed a constant contested process of identity substitution, as they redefined themselves in the face of the loss and gain of socio-political power and privilege. This research contributes to and extends theory on identity work, intersectionality theory and whiteness in management and organisation studies to beyond the boundaries of the organisation, showing that the first level managers’ antipodal constructions of self were responses to the impact of organisational, societal and national political transformations on their variously politicised managerial selves. A particular strength of this study is that it integrates constructivist grounded theory with narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis in a way that privileges the experiences of the participants through their stories about being first level managers in post-apartheid South Africa, while revealing a richly textured theoretical construction of identity work at the margins in the context of significant societal and political change. Ultimately, it is hoped that this study will contribute towards improving working lives in organisations by drawing attention to the everyday struggles of those managers at the lowest level of the management hierarchy in organisations, those at the margins of managerial power, for whom expression of their managerialism and acceptance of their authority as managers is a tenuous process, constantly contested within an organisational context where political power and societal privilege remain dominant mechanisms for influencing organisational behaviour. In so doing this research helps South African organisations to better understand the complex challenges of achieving transformation in the workplace. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Human Resource Management / PhD / Unrestricted

<p>Prior literature on trust repair has focused primarily on exploring the effectiveness of different trust repair tactics in various contexts and the study of repair of trust as a process has been neglected. The literature has also suggested the presence of the humpty-dumpty effect in trust repair i.e. trust cannot be completely repaired once broken, though the claim has been more philosophical than empirical. In this dissertation, we explore the effect of tactic composites instead of analyzing the effect of each tactic separately (as has been the trend in the literature) that can be incorporated by the trustee to repair trust. We also develop multiple pathways that can potentially repair trust completely (specifically, redirect and replenish pathways) and one pathway that can restore the relationship by reestablishing cooperation but without repairing trust (redefine pathway). We structure the tactic composites within these pathways to explore the possibility of complete trust repair. Our results from a policy-capturing technique study and an experimental study show that in the redirect pathway, factual or symbolic evidence backed denial (but not denial alone) increases believability of the innocence claim by the trustee and can repair trust by improving the level of broken trustworthiness of the trustee. In the replenish pathway, only tactic composites that showcase regret through verbal tactics and repentance through behavioral tactics are able to make the trustor perceive that the trustee experiences remorse for the transgression, and only tactics that cater to individual and relational disequilibrium can increase perceived norm restoration in the eyes of the trustor. Both perceived remorse and norm restoration improved the levels of the broken trustworthiness. Finally, in the redefine pathway, strong control systems were better than weak control systems to restore cooperation, even though they had a negative relationship with the level of post-intervention trust. We also tested the potential of complete trust repair through the redirect pathway but did not find conclusive evidence. We discuss the limitations of the empirical studies and make suggestions for future research.</p>

Strategy tools are an important part of strategy work. However, there is considerable debate in the management literature about their actual role, deployment, and conceptualization. Scholars claim that there is a lack of fine-grained analyses to explain strategizers’ activities with regard to their interactions with strategy, their supporting knowledge base, and associated artefacts or tools, despite growing contributions towards the understanding of strategy work dynamics. This study aims to contribute to this gap by discussing research undertaken through ethnographic methods on the day to day work of in-house strategy consultants. By interacting with in-house consultants through active participation and observation, this study observes and analyses the enactment of strategy tools in action. The study focuses on the use of strategy tools, the process they are placed in, and the ultimate purposes they serve. A “strategy-as-practice” lens is adopted, theoretically accessing the use of strategy tools through “reflection in action” and sensemaking. By working with and for consultants, this dissertation obtains insights related to both frontstage and backstage aspects of strategy work, obtaining results that contribute to the skewed existing evaluations on the use of strategy tools. This study proposes a reflexive account on the roles of strategy tools in everyday work by laying out a variety of data items and rhetorical devices. Analysing data, obtained from observations, interviews, written material, and focus groups, takes the findings into first and second order analysis. Based on hundreds of pages of observations, 47 interviews, two focus groups, numerous data files, and other follow up talks, the continuous engagement with data is conveyed to the reader through data outputs, including narratives, vignettes, and visual representations, which give space to a vivid display of what was encountered in the field through this ethnographic study. The findings show that strategy tools are used more than we think, especially in the backstage work of strategy teams. In addition, the use of strategy tools tends to be sequential (some strategy tools are used more in specific phases of strategy projects). In addition, their presence in strategy projects is not always evident at first sight – tools tend to be disassembled and reassembled by their users to create new tools, which are thereafter addressed explicitly or implicitly by strategizers and their audiences. Hence, the thesis proposes an “invisible presence of strategy tools”, especially as observed in the work of experienced strategy workers. By embarking on a journey of Cheshire cats and continuous reconfigurations of sensemaking cues, the reader is invited into what makes the adventurous work of strategy practitioners, and the lege artis their work encompasses.

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This thesis focuses on what I have called truth management. First it traces how modernist and postmodern theorists play their versions of what counts as true. A key critique I stage of modernist theorising is that it privileges decontextualised ways of knowing and silences agency. Drawn from postmodern concerns and my critique of 'normal science', two maps of 'thinking tools' (Bourdieu 1992) are proposed as the basis of my theorising of how truth is managed in organisations. The first map aims to position contextualism within the empirical gaze. It is made up of three contingencies - discourses, time and space. The second map of thinking tools aims to bring agency back into view. It is made up of four contingencies - identity, capital, practices and power. Each of the seven contingencies is used to frame the story of an inter-organisational partnership between an Australian university and a financial institution in part two of the thesis. The story traces their engagement in a negotiated postgraduate degree program - the Work-Based Learning (WBL) program from 1996-2003. In this way, I aim to demonstrate the power of everyday decision making in determining what counts as true. The management of truth is seen to be dynamic, multiple and contingent rather than causal, singular and able to be plotted on a linear trajectory.

No description available.

This thesis focuses on what I have called truth management. First it traces how modernist and postmodern theorists play their versions of what counts as true. A key critique I stage of modernist theorising is that it privileges decontextualised ways of knowing and silences agency. Drawn from postmodern concerns and my critique of 'normal science', two maps of 'thinking tools' (Bourdieu 1992) are proposed as the basis of my theorising of how truth is managed in organisations. The first map aims to position contextualism within the empirical gaze. It is made up of three contingencies - discourses, time and space. The second map of thinking tools aims to bring agency back into view. It is made up of four contingencies - identity, capital, practices and power. Each of the seven contingencies is used to frame the story of an inter-organisational partnership between an Australian university and a financial institution in part two of the thesis. The story traces their engagement in a negotiated postgraduate degree program - the Work-Based Learning (WBL) program from 1996-2003. In this way, I aim to demonstrate the power of everyday decision making in determining what counts as true. The management of truth is seen to be dynamic, multiple and contingent rather than causal, singular and able to be plotted on a linear trajectory.