The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of frequent operational changes on the repairs and maintenance of public lighting in the Energy and Electricity Division of the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality as a result of management decisions. The results of the study showed contrasting opinions and perceptions amongst all participants on the repairs and maintenance activities of public lighting. Both employees working in the maintenance operations and public lighting sections agreed that their sections were performing the repairs and maintenance of public lighting satisfactory. Customers and community leaders on the other hand agreed that the maintenance operations sections are performing the repairs and maintenance of public lighting satisfactory as compared to public lighting section. All employees were in favour and support of decisions taken respectively since these decisions were beneficial to their respective sections, but however they were concerned on the frequency of decisions taken by top management and changes implemented within their respective sections as these decisions and changes created confusion and conflict amongst employees. All sections involved in the repairs and maintenance of public lighting were faced with numerous similar challenges that created deficiencies and ineffectiveness on the maintenance activities of public lighting and that contributed to enormous complaints from customers and community leaders on the service rendered by the division.

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration, Business Studies Unit, Durban University of Technology, 2008. / Telkom SA, over the last decade and a half, has undergone major change in terms of the manner in which it does business. From being a state-owned company to becoming a para-statal, to being run by foreigners and, finally, being run by local leaders within the company, Telkom SA has transformed as a company. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of change implementation on staff turnover in Telkom SA by reviewing the following key issues: The implementation of change within Telkom SA, benchmarked against international best practices; the communication of change/re-structuring initiatives by management in Telkom SA; the effect of change implementation on staff turnover; and the effect of change implementation on employee morale and retention. The rationale of this study is to allow Telkom SA management to review their current implementation strategy of change management initiatives in Telkom SA. Thereafter, it will provide guidelines for improvements in change implementation for the management of Telkom SA. Staff turnover and employee morale can negatively impact service delivery and financial performance of a company, so these recommendations are aimed at improving service delivery and financial performance. The study was descriptive, cross sectional and quantitative, involving the application of a questionnaire, via e-mail and personal interviews, with a sample of staff from the core planning section in the Network Infrastructure Provisioning division, where a high staff turnover rate existed. The questionnaire focused on assessing the impact of the implementation of change management processes on staff turnover at Telkom SA and was developed from the literature review. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 15 for both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that a significant percentage of respondents were v vi dissatisfied with the way management had handled issues related to change implementation, communication, turnover, morale and retention. With this in mind, recommendations on ways to reduce the impact of the key issues on the organisation were made. These included the recommendation of lean methodology in order to deal with the first three key issues, namely, implementation, communication, and turnover. Thereafter the ‘four cores of credibility’ model was recommended to improve employee morale. Finally recommendations were made on ways to improve employee retention. The overarching issue that has come to light is that although management is, to a degree, communicating change implementation, there is a noticeable lack of engagement with employees. The onus, therefore, lies with leadership to lift the levels of engagement with employees, thereby reducing the impact of change implementation on the organisation by increasing the level of transparency in the organisation. Improving communication would lead to improved trust, which would then result in improved employee morale, ultimately leading to a reduction in the staff turnover rate.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Emotional intelligence has been a much debated topic in leadership circles globally, since the idea was first conceived in the 1970s, and later made popular by Goleman in the 1990s (Goleman, 1995: 5). In an endeavour to effect a culture change at the Glencore SA operations, a process of emotional intelligence (EI) training has been rolled out to the leadership at the mining operations over the past four years. This has met with varying degrees of success, but it begs the question: What is the value of this training, and how effective is it expected to be? This research set out to assess the correlation between the results in productivity and safety, with that of the exposure of emotional intelligence to the leadership at the Goedgevonden (GGV) coal mining operation. To this end, this research sought to develop a view of the levels of emotional intelligence, or the lack thereof, prior to any form of intervention, and to draw comparisons with the present EI levels. The hypothesis being: EI training of the leadership team at the Goedgevonden operation has significantly improved performance. The research then tested a sample of the GGV leadership for their emotional intelligence quotient using a commercially available test. These test results have been included in the findings. The concept of group emotional intelligence (GEI) was studied in the course of the literature review, and it was further deemed pertinent to examine this concept as to its relevance at the Goedgevonden operation. Tests were conducted with two teams. A distinct disparity arose from the findings of the team emotional tests, which did not correlate with the similar training to which both teams had been exposed. The findings of the team emotional tests also correlated significantly with the performance of the two teams over the past three years. A ten percent discrepancy in performance exists, as with a very similar percentage in test scores. A strong sense of need for emotional intelligence training evolved from the interview process. More significantly, was the need for this training to be aimed at the lower levels of the organisation, as well as for this training to incorporate a strong element of team EI. These aspects are both articulated in the recommendations also.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study was inspired by the quest of a South African public utility confronted with complex challenges which necessitated requisite leadership behaviour change, to understand what differentiated executive-level leaders who chose to engage in executive coaching from those who did not. Executive coaching was offered as a support mechanism to accelerate the absorption and application of learning for behaviour change during an executive-level leadership development programme. For the duration of the programme though, requests for executive coaching remained relatively low for the total executive-level leadership population. The study’s research question was: Is level of self-awareness in executive-level leaders a differentiator for openness to engage in executive coaching? This was delineated from the broad definition of self-awareness as the extent to which individuals see themselves as others see them. To answer the research question, three hypotheses were tested based on the three secondary objectives of this study in order to determine: 1) Differences in self-awareness from an emotional perspective for leaders who engaged in executive coaching versus those who did not; 2) differences in self-awareness from a developmental perspective for leaders who engaged in executive coaching versus those who did not; and 3) differences between leader self-awareness from and emotional perspective versus a developmental perspective. An exploration of existing literature on the focal topics of this study suggested that openness to both learning and behaviour change is positively associated with leadership self-awareness. The researcher postulated that an informed interpretation of such association could present worthwhile information to be employed towards the optimisation of executive coaching as a support mechanism to leadership development programmes. This study was conducted from a post-positivist paradigm. This allowed for researching a complex aspect such as openness to deep personal change and growth, through a quantitative exploration of associations between variables as well as the offering of possible explanations for those. Secondary data was analysed through the application of descriptive and inferential statistics. The study did not find statistically significant evidence to support the three research hypotheses postulated regarding a possible association between leadership self-awareness and openness to engage in executive coaching. However, at a descriptive statistical level, the study did reveal a general trend of a positive association between well-developed emotional-capacity on constructs commonly related to pro-change behaviour (adaptability, flexibility, impulse control and stress management) and a high level of self-awareness from a developmental perspective. Due to the inability of this study to find statistically significant evidence in support of the hypotheses postulated, the researcher had to conduct a further exploration of findings and conclusions from studies related to the current study, in an effort to interpret the current study’s findings. A comparison of the current study’s findings at a descriptive statistical level with other related studies generated a number of additional questions and recommendations for further research. It also brought to light support for executive coaching as a primary mechanism available to organisations to cultivate leadership self-awareness and adaptability to change. This study indeed produced more questions than answers, and the researcher is of the opinion that the value of this research lies in the reflections, further questions and recommendations for further research produced during the struggle to overcome the limitations of the study.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / abstract / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

<p>Today’s business environment is becoming increasingly dynamic, complex and socially aware. One sustainable competitive advantage in contemporary, rapidly changing organizations is competent management (Waldman, Ramirez, House, & Puranam, 2001). The behaviors of organizational leaders directly influence actions in the work environment that enable change (Drucker, 1999).</p><p>Leaders in complex organizations are now responsible for creating and nurturing conditions which will enable fast, innovative adaptations to change. Indeed, leaders and managers are responsible for change strategy, implementation, and monitoring, thus they function as change agents (Kanter, Stein, & Jick, 1992). However, they must take into consideration that there is a part of unknown, which they will never control.</p><p>As a result, the challenge of managing change is one of the most essential and enduring roles of leaders (Ahn, Adamson, & Dornbusch, 2004) while current rapid organizational changes has made effective leadership more imperative. Resistance to change is a dead-end street. In today's business world, organizations that support and implement continuous and transformational change remain competitive (Cohen, 1999).</p><p>Many researchers have attempted to explain why change is so difficult to achieve, and develop models to manage the change process. Despite the numerous theories, models, and multi-step approaches, leaders continue to lack a clear understanding of change, its antecedents, effective processes or the ability to successfully implement organizational change and how to engage members in change initiatives (Armenakis & Harris, 2002).</p><p>The purpose of this study is to explore leaders’ effectiveness in implementing organizational change and the processes, skills, abilities required for such effectiveness. My reference to leaders implies all leaders and managers within an organization. The literature review that follows explores change implementation processes, current complex environment and the leadership behaviors associated with successful change.</p>

<p>The use of one form or another of team based work organization (TBWO) management policies and practices by firms with the aim of improving organizational performance and employee morale is well documented in popular literature. Empirical research has however found that the implementation of TBWO management policies and practices such as TB training, TB incentive schemes, participation in decision making, work teams etc. had minimal influence on the performance of firms (Locke and Schweiger, 1979).<br /> This research investigated the factors, which account for the effective implementation of TBWO management policies and practices with specific emphasis on three firms in the metal fabrications sector. The reason behind the choice of the three firms in the metal fabrication sector in the Western Cape was that these sites offered a rare opportunity to study the process of the implementation of TBWO. It was a rare opportunity because not many firms have embarked on implementing TBWO in South Africa. It was envisaged that the lessons that emerged from this study would be invaluable for firms that intended implementing workplace change. The level of analysis was the shop floor level at the firms as research has shown that this is the level that plays a critical role in the effectiveness of the TB management policies and practices implemented by the firms.</p>

M.Comm. / The word "culture" has many definitions and implications. Its nature is often difficult to define and hard to compress. It reflects how people think about their world and environment and how they make choices to survive within it. Most importantly, though, it mirrors the changes in mindset and growth of a specific group of people.