M.Comm. / The people who make waves in today's business world aren't playing by yesterday's rules. They've jettisoned tradition. They've turned the old cosy business of being in business upside down and inside out. Towering corporate structures are crumbling. Middle managers are a dying breed. Successful â bosses now lead their troops from the front. People are becoming multiskilled. Enlightened businesses make this happen. Whatever it takes. Our society, facing momentous challenges in the closing years of the twentieth century, needs visions of the future so attractive, inspiring, and compelling that people will shift from their current mind-set of focusing on immediate crises to one of eagerly anticipating the future - a future where the health and well-being of the earth and its inhabitants is secure. As we round the corner of the millennium, questions about our future loom ever larger on the horizon. The decade ahead is sure to bring more radical changes in everything from marketing to enterpreneuring, resources, demographics, lifstyles and more. Success in 2000 and beyond will mean riding the crest of this wave of change- but if we are to catch the wave before it catches us, we must see it coming. This study have adopted Alvin Toffler's concept of waves of change, to serve as the framework for the vision of business in the twenty-first century. The First Wave of change, the agricultural revolution, has essentially ended. The Second Wave, co-incidental with industrialisation, has covered much of the earth and continues to spread, while a new, postindustrial Third Wave is gathering force in the modern industrial nations. A Fourth Wave is following close upon the Third

M.Com. (Business Management) / Global competition, changing markets and new technologies, challenge the traditional view of the business organisation. Markets are undergoing rapid and constant change as a result of customers becoming more specialised in their needs and demanding higher quality products and services. Improved internal performance is forced upon organisations as the wave of globalization dissolves customary boundaries, increasing world trade and competition. This turbulent business environment demands of organisations to constantly monitor and interpret change within its external context as it unfolds so as to constantly align the pace at which the organisation can move through substantial and continuous evolution. The move of organisations in synchronism with their environment is becoming increasingly difficult. Business transformation, evolving from business process re-engineering to extending the original business and then redefining it to create new business creates a means of increasing business performance and continuous alignment with changing market needs. (Davidson, 1993 :65).

M.Comm.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (M Eng (Technology Management))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM) / unrestricted

In this research, the researcher-consultant together with the management corps of a merged IT organisation, embarked on a process of participative research with the aim to identify the competencies and skills that are required of the management-leadership corps to drive a process of change management and to ensure the organisation will be characterised by sustained growth and development. In using participative research methodology, qualitative data was mainly gathered through informal interviews and focus group sessions to identify the competencies and skills that are defined as important for the change manager-cum-leader role within the merged IT organisation. In addition, a matrix was compiled to enable each manager/leader to undertake a self-assessment of how capable they are in using the identified competencies and skills. The outcome of the assessment provided an indication of the areas of competencies and skills that through various interventions would enable the management-leadership corps to deal with the challenges of change, as well as to guide those that report to them through a process of change. While the management-leadership corps – referred to as the Executive, Senior, and Middle Management cohorts – all require enhancing their change management / leadership competencies and skills capability, it is the Middle Management cohort that is better equipped to perform their change management and leadership role. During the research, focus group sessions enhanced a participative methodology to enable identification of competencies important to the IT Company’s vision, mission and core values, as well as opportunity to identify interventions that will encourage an on-going process of change, growth and development. However, there is indication that the members of the Executive and Senior Management cohorts assessed themselves higher on those competencies that relate directly to their functionary roles, rather than the change management-leadership role. The scope of a treatise limits an in-depth and expanded research endeavour; however, the methodology used provided information on how a platform for participation in a change management process can be enabled. Furthermore, this research gives indication of how a management-leadership strata can ‘buy-in’ to the process of change, growth and development, commencing with the self and, which is aimed to encourage the same in those that share responsibility for sustained growth and development of the IT company. The research is also example of how an applied sociology endeavour can be undertaken.

M.Com. (Business Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Com. (Industrial Psychology) / Change is one of the foremost issues in organizations, if not the foremost issue in people's everyday life. Organizational change involves any substantive modification to some part of the organization. This change may be prompted by forces internal or external to the organization. Typically organizational change involves the restructuring or elimination of jobs, found in actions such as reorganization, automation, rapid growth, downsizing, job redefinition, a physical move, the effects of competition, or a shifting market. Whatever the "trigger" for the change, people are experiencing confusion, worry, anger, numbness or all of the above. The cumulative effect of change on people is the same, and is manifest in resistance. Even though people know change is imminent and even though they understand it intellectually, it still has an emotional impact that they do not quite expect and that they find difficult to cope with. Many different change techniques or interventions are used for managing change. The most common ones involve changing organizational strategy, structure and design, technology and people. The focus of this study is on people, and illustrates the general inability of managers and subordinates to cope with organizational change, and to discuss a suitable training technique to overcome the inability to cope. A literature study was undertaken to determine the suitability of introducing facilitator training for managers in the management of change. It seems that managers are not taught or possess the skills necessary in dealing with the emotional content of subordinates reaction to change. Against this background it was determined that managers lacked the necessary skill of facilitation and as a result subordinates are not helped to cope during the process of organizational change. Facilitation training equips managers to function more effectively as managers and as persons. As a result managers are able to assist subordinates to cope with their emotional reaction to change. Results obtained from research on the application of facilitator training within management, indicate positive growth in the trainee on both the inter- and intrapersonal level. This growth resulted in the acquiring of certain characteristics within the manager which were of benefit in his interaction with his colleagues and subordinates. It is deduced that managers acquiring these characteristics will be able to facilitate a process of helping whereby subordinates are helped to help themselves during an organizational change process.

M.Comm. / "While discovery focuses on the new and unique, research is the process of re-examining something we already know a great deal about. The fundamental purpose of research is to confirm what we know and believe is in fact true and to develop a more knowledgeable understanding of its essence." (The Global Logistics Research Team at Michigan State University,1995:1). Organisations need a better way of changing, a way of involving large percentages of their people in making the shift from a "business as usual" scenario to one of real time strategic change. Jacobs (1995:18) clearly states that in a real time strategic change scenario, all members of the organisation are meaningful involved in deciding upon and responsible for delivering the organisation's results. In essence, real time strategic change is about a new way of understanding organisations, how they operate, the role individual people can play in making a difference in their organisational lives, and how they can become aligned with each other as a motivated, empowered, total organisation. To be "World Class" means that a firm has successfully visualised and applied a combination of logistical practices capable of serving selected customers better than competitors. The management, employees, systems, technologies and operations of world class firms are finely tuned and synchronised to efficiently meet and exceed customer expectations. For a firm to perform consistently at a world class level means that its employees possess knowledge of what constitutes best practice and know how to implement that behaviour successfully. With this study it is hoped that some of the findings may be of practical benefit to the Cadbury (Pty) Ltd top management team in making strategic decisions on putting the company on the road to become "World Class".

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Also availalbe in microfilm.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Benedictine University, 2005. / Chair: Peter Sorensen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 294-298)