The South African economic landscape changed for ever after the first democratic election of 1994. The change heralded an era of inclusion, the economic landscape became open to people from all races, whereas before economic power was centralised in the hands of a minority group due to Apartheid legislation. Exploring the relationship of diversity of board members on the corporate governance of small, micro and medium enterprises (SMME’s) in South Africa has become imperative. Understanding the relationship, if any, which exists can aid SMME’s in board selection and corporate governance alike. Data for the study was collected through a self-enumerated questionnaire completed electronically and followed-up by interviews with heads of boards surveyed. Both the questionnaire and the interviews focussed on corporate governance, which included different components of governance such as the general principles of governance followed in the enterprise, the stakeholder focus exerted by the board of directors and the functioning of the board of directors. This resulted in a score for the enterprise which can be expressed as a percentage. This governance indicator was related to questions on the diversity of board members. The findings were in many cases contradictive when a single variable was observed against the score an enterprise achieved for governance. When taking a more holistic approach and evaluating multiple variables, it became evident that it is rather a combination of variables which displays some relationship with corporate governance. This study found that board diversity does have a relationship with corporate governance. The magnitude of this relationship could not be ascertained and warrants further research in a wider spectrum of the South African economy and also with a larger group of subjects. / Business Management / M. Tech. (Business Administration)

This research focused on constructing a psychological profile for change interventions by investigating both the interrelationships and overall relationships between work stress (as the independent variable), psychological attachment (job embeddedness and organisational commitment) (as the mediating variables) and attitudes towards change (as the dependent variable). A non-experimental cross-sectional quantitative survey design approach using standardised valid and reliable measuring instruments (Sources of Job Stress Scale, Organisational Commitment Questionnaire, Job Embededdness Questionnaire, Attitudes towards Change Questionnaire) was used on a non-probability purposive sample of employees from one of the largest, fast-moving consumer goods companies in South Africa (N = 350), ranging from administrative to executive level. Bivariate correlations showed a statistically positive inter-relationship between sources of work stress, psychological attachment (job embeddedness and organisational commitment) and attitudes towards change. A canonical correlation analysis indicated a significant overall relationship between the sources of work stress, psychological attachment (job embeddedness and organisational commitment) and attitudes towards change dispositions. Mediation modelling revealed the mediating role of psychological attachment (organisational commitment and job embeddedness) in the sources of work stress and attitudes towards change relationship. Moderated hierarchical regression analyses showed that age and gender significantly moderated the relationship between individuals’ sources of work stress and their attitudes towards change dispositions. Tests for mean differences revealed that significant differences exist between age and sources of work stress, affective and continuance commitment, fit and sacrifice embeddedness. Differences exist between race groups’ affective and continuance commitment. Job security is a concern across all employment levels in the organisation. Individuals at an executive, upper administrative and administrative level revealed significant differences in terms of their continuance commitment. Cognitive and behavioural attitudes towards change did not differ significantly across all employment levels. At a theoretical level, this study developed an understanding of the cognitive, affective, conative and interpersonal behavioural dimensions of the hypothesised psychological profile to manage change. At an empirical level, it developed an empirically tested psychological profile for change interventions in terms of the various behavioural dimensions. At a practical level, organisational change practices in terms of the behavioural dimensions of the psychological profile were recommended. / Psychology / D. Phil. (Psychology)

The Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation, the International Federation of Air Traffic Control Associations, the International Air Transport Association and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation agree that professionals in the Air Navigation Services Provider Sector require successful organisational leadership to facilitate and manage transformation within the highly regulated Air Navigation Services Provider Sector. Detailed organisational leadership requirements and associated leadership training and development needs are, however, not specified by the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation. An opportunity therefore existed to investigate leadership traits and behaviours within a specific context. This research project is contextualised within a safety-conscious, highly regulated and technology-driven industry (the South African Aviation Industry), a safety-critical sector (Air Navigation Services) and specifically the Air Traffic and Navigation Services Company. It was found that little academic research has been done to address the role of followers in the leadership process and to determine what followers expect and require from their leaders. The research problem statement, in response to this research necessity, is: “How can follower experiences and expectations of leadership behaviours in a safety-critical commercial environment be collected, analysed, understood, structured and utilised to aid leadership development?” An ethnographic research case study approach allowed the researcher to investigate the multifarious phenomena that constitute the current views (experiences and expectations) held by followers with regard to leadership behaviour qualities. A mixed methods approach was followed. Data collection was facilitated by means of individual interviews, focus group interviews, field notes and a structured questionnaire. Qualitative data were inductively analysed to identify the recurring patterns and common themes and quantitative data were deductively analysed to assess the nature of existing conditions and relevance. Data and method triangulation was implemented to determine whether multiple sources of data agreed, and to obtain better, cross-checked insights. Findings from this research study provided academic, industry, process and methodology insights into views held by followers regarding leadership and followership constructs. Definitions and perspectives held and reported by followers regarding leaders and leadership, characteristics of preferred and undesired leadership styles, relational and emotional bonds between followers and their leaders acknowledged the presence, value and influence of follower mental models. In this case followers contextualised leadership roles and responsibilities and suggested a transformational leadership style as a desired state. Findings also emphasised a need to appreciate the importance of the social exchange and social contingency theories of leadership in order to create a better understanding of leadership by emphasising the importance of context when studying leaders and leadership from a follower perspective. Obtained follower insights resulted in a structured leadership training and development needs analysis process framed within the specific context. Future research efforts in this regard may be aimed at determining the necessity to educate followers to critically appreciate and evaluate leadership performance and creating a better understanding of how followers’ mental models internally represent complex, dynamic systems and how these representations change over time. / Business Management / DBL

Effective corporate governance of boards can become a sustainable competitive advantage for organisations. In the extant literature a number of reasons are cited for dysfunctional boards. Some of the reasons attributed to board failure relate to poor corporate governance, practice and oversight. Some of the reasons for board failure pertain to micromanaging of the organisation, an ineffective nominating committee, size of the board, non-functioning committee structure, absence of strategic plan, no orientation\induction plan and no rotational plan. Poor governance practises across all sectors has negatively tainted economic investment in South Africa consequentially affecting economic growth. Below South Africa’s competitive rating slipped from (52nd) in 2012-2013 to 53rd in 2013-2014 rating is given to show that marked improvement is needed in corporate governance. South Africa’s rating in the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2012 was 43 and slipped to position 69 amongst 176 countries for the Corruption Perception Index, 2013. The trend analysis report of the Public Service Commission reported that In 2006/7, there were 1 042 cases of corruption, amounting to R130.6-million; in 2007/8, there were 868 cases, amounting to R21.7-million; in 2008/9, there were 1 204 cases, amounting to R100.1-million; in 2009/10, there were 1 135 cases, amounting to R346.5-million; in 2010/11, there were 1 035 cases, amounting to R932.3-million; in 2011/12, there were 1 243 cases, amounting to R229.9-million. Good governance frameworks, policies, procedures, processes and practices attract foreign direct investments. Better governance practices are critical for improved economic growth and development that will result in an improvement in the South Africa’s competitiveness and corruption perception index ratings. South Africa’s continued economic growth and development is dependent on attracting foreign direct investment. From 1994 corporate governance regimes were promulgated. Although there are a collection of corporate governance codes and guidelines that have been published, few specifically cover governance practices in public entities. Moreover, with better governance practices state-owned enterprises can significantly contribute to the economic transformation and development in South Africa. The purpose of the study is to establish that improved governance is a function of board structure and board process variables. With the presence of structural and process variables board activism will improve resulting in board decision quality. Independent directors without no conflict of interest, the requisite industry expertise and intelligence (functional area knowledge), the information to make decisions are adequate, accurate and timely (information quality), directors exert the needed effort (effort norms), directors robustly explore all dimensions and options (cognitive conflict) and the board functions optimally (cohesiveness) influence board decision quality. Boards which are configured optimally are able to execute their fiduciary responsibility optimally. In 2012 a budget of R845.5 billion was provisioned for infrastructural development to boost economic development. This budget allocation must be prudently and frugally managed in accordance with good governance practises to achieve economic development. In particular South Africa has to improve its competitiveness rating and corruption perception index to attract investments and continual growth. In terms of the research design, to address the research questions, a mixed research approach was selected for the study. The phenomenological (qualitative) and positivist (quantitative) philosophical paradigms were adopted with the purpose to obtain a greater understanding of board decision quality in the Public Entities in South Africa. The data collection instruments used in the study was in-depth interviews, focus group interviews and administration of a survey. The population for the qualitative research was 19 in-depth interviews and two focus group interviews. For the quantitative study a population of 215 public entity board members were selected for the study. A total of 104 board members of Public Entities completed the survey for the study. In relation to data analysis for the qualitative study Tesch’s coding, thematic analysis was used to analyse the in-depth and focus group interviews. For the quantitative study, SPSS was used to analyse responses from the surveys. The hypothesis was tested using inferential statistics, namely, factor analysis and multiple regression was used.. The findings generated from the first phase, the qualitative study that provided support for the positive relationship between board structure, board process variables and board decision quality. The following five variables are incorporated in a model that seeks to identify the strongest predictor of board decision quality: (1) board independence, (2) effort norms, (3) functional area knowledge and skill, (4) cognitive conflict and (5) information quality. The findings show that information quality is the strongest predictor of board decision quality followed by expert knowledge and skill. As expected, expert knowledge does not only increase the cognitive capacity of the board, but it also positively affects company competitiveness. The findings also show that cognitive conflict has a negative association with decision quality. The study argues that political influence exerted by board political appointees may explain the negative relationship between cognitive conflict and board decision quality. The major contribution of this study is that it provides a 28-item instrument that can be used practically by public entity boards in the reflective process to improve board decision quality. The study concludes by offering avenues for further research. The model suggests that board decision quality is a product of board structure (board independence), board process (functional area knowledge, information quality, and cognitive conflict and effort norms). / Business Management / D.B.L.

The general objective of this research was to do a comparative study of the Trust Audit results - obtained during 2000 - of three Business Units of a South African Company in order to determine whether there are any significant differences between them regarding the ”Big Five” personality dimensions and the ”Managerial Practices” dimensions. Trust has been found to be an essential ingredient in all organisations, providing the impetus for employers to gain a better understanding of the building blocks of organisational trust and to restore eroded trust. The intensity of any trust relationship will depend on certain facilitators of trustworthiness which may facilitate or impede the flow of trust. Research studies indicate that organisations with high levels of trust will be more successful, adaptive, and innovative than organisations with low levels of trust or pervasive mistrust. Positive results were indicated for all Business Units regarding the personality aspects. The most positive ”Big Five” dimensions were conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness while the lowest dimension was resourcefulness. Overall results regarding managerial practices indicated that not enough information sharing took place and that this had a negative effect within the work environment. The credibility dimension, being lower than the others, indicated that better credibility of persons that are reported to, could improve trust and optimal functioning within the working environment. Team management, work support and trust relationship were viewed positively by all Business Units. One of the main conclusions of this research was that managers/leaders have a pivotal role to play in creating high-trust organisations and engendering trusting relationships. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Comm. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

The growth and expansion of the Haven Night Shelter Welfare Organisation has been accompanied by a pattern of emotional and negative dismissals and resignations of senior managerial personnel. The research project explores how the management capacity of the managers could be enhanced through training, development and maintenance functions of human resource management. The literature study focused on reviewing outcomes-based education, training and development methodology. The empirical study involved examining the biographical information of the research participants. It also sought to explore the organisational culture by identifying managerial competencies of skills, interpersonal relationships, management style, attitudes and beliefs. Investigating the knowledge base of participants, included exploring human resource management practices, training and development legislation and labour relations. The conclusions and recommendations are based on the findings of the survey as completed by the participants. The guidelines for a training programme include outcomes-based learning principles to raise morale, skill and knowledge. / Social work / M. Diac. (Social Work)

This research explores the relationship between the organisational culture and financial performance of a South African investment bank by means of quantitative research. The Denison Organizational Culture Survey was used to measure the organisational culture of the investment bank and was administered to a sample of 327 employees. Income statement ratio analysis was selected as a means to assess the financial performance. The results indicate that very few of the financial measures selected could be shown to be correlated with the organisational cultural traits or subscales. Correlations between the cultural dimensions of team orientation, agreement, customer focus and vision were found with certain financial measures. Although these correlations were above the 0.50 level, the levels of significance were not sufficient in all cases to draw conclusions with confidence. The only cultural trait that was found to be correlated with financial measures was the consistency trait. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

The purpose of this study was to describe and explore the organisational climate as a cause of job dissatisfaction among nursing staff in selected hospitals within Mpumalanga Province. The major objectives were to determine what organisational climate encompasses; ascertain which factors related to organisational climate can cause dissatisfaction among nurses; determine whether there is a difference in the way nursing management and the nursing staff perceive the existing organisational climate; and make recommendations for health service managers to improve the organisational climate in order facilitate greater job satisfaction among their subordinates. The descriptive exploratory survey method was used. A questionnaire with closed-ended and open-ended questions were distributed and collected from one hundred and fourty (140) respondents. The results indicated that the nursing management and the nursing staff are happy with the intrinsic factors of the job, but dissatisfied with the extrinsic factors of the organisational climate. The outcome of this research affirms that there are extrinsic factors within the work climate that affect the nursing management and the nursing staff negatively. Recommendations are made to promote job satisfaction in selected hospitals within the Mpumalanga province. / Health Studies / M.A. (Nursing Science)

Text in Afrikaans / Hierdie studie is onderneem om die invloed van die veranderingsproses op die funksionering van 'n welsynsorganisasie te bepaal. 'n Literatuurstudie en empiriese studie is onderneem. Die navorsing het aangedui dat die redes vir verandering hoofsaaklik ekstern van aard is, dat 'n hoe persentasie respondente nie altyd die noodsaaklikheid of rede vir verandering verstaan nie, en dat die meerderheid die kommunikasieproses en deurgee van inligting nie altyd duidelik beleef nie. Die ondersoek dui verder aan dat die motivering van grondvlak maatskaplike werkers deur die bestuurders nie onderskat moet word nie. Die deurgee van inligting is positief ervaar, maar die werkers sou meer ondersteuning daarvan van die bestuur wou ervaar. Tydens die studie is daar 'n beperkte mate van weerstand gevind. Weerstand by werkers word egter beperk indien hulle ervaar dat hulle deel van die proses is, voorberei word op verandering, sekuriteit nie be"invloed word nie en hulle oor die nodige redes vir verandering ingelig wor / The purpose of this study was to establish the influence of the process of change on the functioning of a welfare organisation. A literature and empirical study was done. Research showed that reasons for change were primarily of an external kind, that a high percentage of respondents not always understand the necessity or reasons for change, and that most of the respondents experienced the communication channels and information not always as open and clear. The research shows that motivation of ground level social workers by managers must under no circumstances be under-estimated. The way in which information was given, was experienced positively, but workers needed more support with it from management. During the research a limited degree of resistance was further found. Resistance experienced by workers became less when they were part of the process, are prepared for change, their security not threatened and the reasons for change are known to them. / Social Work / M. Diac. (Maatskaplike Werk-rigting)

Text in Afrikaans, summary in Afrikaans and English / Hierdie studie is onderneem om die effek van leierskap op verandering in 'n nie-winsgewende organisasie te bepaal. 'n Literatuur- en 'n empiriese studie is onderneem. Literatuur beklemtoon dat verandering 'n realiteit in 'n organisasie is, 'n veranderingsagent die proses moet dryf en dat die transformasieleierskapstyl die gewenste styl vir veranderingsbestuur is. Navorsing toon dat verandering vanwee ekstreme invloede wel voorkom. Verwarring ten opsigte van wie die rol en verantwoordelikheid as veranderingsagent moet vertolk kom egter in die navorsing na vore. Die wyse en frekwensie waarop kommunikasie ten opsigte van verandering plaasgevind het, word oor die algemeen positief deur die respondente ervaar, maar respondente toon egter ook positiewe en negatiewe gedragsreaksies aan ten opsigte van verandering. Respondente toon dat die transformasieleierskapstyl met leierskapsgedrag/-kenmerke wat verband hou met integriteit, toeganklikheid en objektlwiteit hul tot deelname aan verandering motiveer. Navorsing toon ook dat leierskapspotensiaal en die behoefte aan leierskapsontwikkeling by respondente teenwoordig is. Navorsing het bevestig dat leierskap 'n effek op verandering in 'n nie-winsgewende organisasie het. / This research aims to establish whether leadership has an effect on change in a not-for-profit organisation. A literature and empirical study were conducted. Literature indicated that change in organisations is a reality and that organisations need to appoint change agents in order to facilitate the change process. Research has shown that change in not-for-profit organisation was caused by external influences and indicated that confusion exists as to whom the role and responsibility of change agent belongs to. Respondents indicated that they were generally positive about the frequency and way in which change was communicated but they indicated both positive and negative behavioral reactions to change. The transformational leadership style is highlighted as the best leadership style to manage change. The transformational leadership style with leadership behavior such as integrity, approachability and objectivity motivates respondents to participate in the change process. Research also indicated that respondents have leadership potential and have a need for leadership development. This study confirmed that leadership has an effect on change in a not-for-profit organisation. / Social Work / M.Diac. (Maatskaplike Werk-rigting)