Employee participation is a common and popular aspect of most labour relations systems in many countries, including South Africa (the RSA). For years now, there have been debates around the actual benefits of employee participation initiatives to both the business and its employees. Various factors influence the development of participation initiatives within businesses. Some of these factors include legislation, management perceptions and attitudes, socio-economic factors, political and business complexities. These factors vary from one economy to another, from industry to industry, from company to company and may be classified into internal or external factors. It is even suggested that participation initiatives and levels of implementation may be different within the same organization, from department to department, and from one geographic set-up to another within the same organisation. It is for this reason that this research was undertaken. RoyalServe(RS) has an average of 12 000 employees and about 800 sites or branches or units within the RSA. A number of employee participation models and initiatives exist within RS, and it has been argued by many (inter alia trade unions, employees, managers) that the implementation of these models varies from one site to the next - with one of the major influencing factors being the size of a branch or site. Employee participation initiatives and models are established either voluntarily or in response to compliance with legislation. Some scholars and practitioners have suggested that employee participation models that yield positive results for both parties are the ones that are voluntary and have not been undertaken for legal compliance purposes. Others argue that even in cases where it is legislated and practiced for compliance, the end result remains the same. From a comparative point of view, the Japanese and German models of employee participation have been, for some time now, crowned as classic examples of employee participation. Interestingly, the two models (Japanese and German) were implemented for contrasting reasons. The Japanese model is voluntary whereas the German model is legislated. Both models remain leading examples of how successful participation can be, regardless of the reasons for its implementation. Royal Serve Cleaning operates in three Sub Saharan countries: South Africa, Lesotho and Namibia (making it a transnational organisation). The Head Office is situated in Midrand, Johannesburg, RSA. The following regional offices exist to provide immediate and more flexible support to both employees and clients at regional level: Cape Town: Western Cape; Midrand: Gauteng Province, Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga; Bloemfontein: Free State, Lesotho and Northern Cape; Durban: KZN; Port Elizabeth: Eastern Cape; Namibia.The primary goal of this research was to investigate how the size of a site influences the implementation of employee participation within RoyalServe Cleaning (Pty) Ltd. Put differently, the question to be answered by the research is: are employee participation initiatives applied similarly across all sites within RoyalServe regardless of size? Another question that has been answered in this research report, albeit indirectly, is: do RoyalServe employees understand the various participation initiatives in place at all levels of the organisation? Accusations have been leveled by some employees that employee participation initiatives at RS are benefiting only those employees based at the big sites at the expense of the smaller ones. The research methodology followed in this paper includes: A review of the available literature about RoyalServe employee participation strategies, initiatives, minutes, reports and practices; The development of a questionnaire which was then distributed to selected employees at all levels within the organisation. The analysis of information gathered in the above activities and recommendations formulated was based on gathered data.

The human resource department in many organisations is at a crossroad of relevance, constantly being faced with the challenge to prove that it can add value towards the objectives of the business. The Human Resource (HR) department is also faced with a reality that, if the department does not add value to the organisation, it will be farmed out to independent contractors, who can deliver the HR functions at a more efficient and cost effective way. However, organisations have a great opportunity to achieve excellence and competitive advantage through the utilisation of the organisation‟s human resources. Many scholars and authors argued that organisations can achieve the most out of its human resources if the HR department is a Strategic Business Partner (SBP) in these organisations. A thorough literature review has led to the discovery that, despite the appraisal of the Strategic Business Partners (SBP) approach to the management of human resources, little progress has been made with the reinvention of the HR departments from support function towards being a SBP (Lawler & Morhman, 2003; Keith, 2007). The slow progress in the transformation of the HR department was attributed to a wide range of factors including the lack of competencies to take up Strategic Business Partnership roles, lack of management support, and incongruent organisational cultures (Keith, 2007; Sanders & Frenkel, 2009; Ulrich & Brockbank, 2005). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with HR professionals, Managing Directors and other Directors, who sit on a strategic table, to identify the challenges and opportunities the HR department faced as a SBP in organisations. A self-administered questionnaire, based on an existing questionnaire (Ulrich & Cornell (1997) HR role assessment survey) was used to gather the perception of employees regarding the roles the HR departments play in organisations. In this study organisational culture was identified as having a huge impact towards the implementation of HR departments as SBPs. The study also identified the competencies needed for the effective execution of SBP roles, the challenges HR departments may face in the process as well as the important roles the HR department should be devoting most of its time and resources to.

This study reflects an investigation into four elements that could affect global expansion strategies within the hotel industry. In both emerging and developed economies, the increased growth within the services sector has become more apparent. There is considerable knowledge and literature available on the process of internationalisation, globalisation and expansion within the services sector and as this information is important to understand the internationalisation process itself, the decision to expand (cross border) presents a number of opportunities and challenges to the hotel industry. Hotels are comprised of a number of divisions and departments, which collectively offer unique services and facilities to various markets. Within this context, careful consideration is required with respect to an organisation‟s overall strategic objectives, the internal structure and how government and cultural influences and differences affect global expansion. Organisational matters such as strategic objectives as well as operational functions such as financial, marketing and sales, human resources and organisational design must also be considered as hotels require synergy within each of these various components in order to function optimally. When international or globalisation opportunities present themselves or are proactively sought, organisations need to ensure that various factors are clearly understood, analysed and identified. These include the most appropriate strategy required, the organisations own internal capacity levels, governmental influences and cultural dynamics. An in-depth literature review regarding the internationalisation process was conducted where-after a review was compiled and interviews set up with directors of hotel groups who are responsible for global expansion within their respective organisations. The sample included three local South African and two international hotel groups who either were contemplating or who had already expanded internationally. It is evident that hotel companies have a preference to non-equity based expansion either through management contracts or joint ventures. In addition, expansion into emerging markets required a different approach to that of developed markets and a unique understanding of the government and cultural influences of the host country was required.

In this dissertation I investigate initial public offering prospectuses to examine institutionalized outcomes about risk and strategy and test whether information about those outcomes can be used to predict firm performance. I use three conceptual perspectives—managerial risk, New Institutional theory, and Organizational Cognition—to explore these outcomes in the main body of this thesis. The main body contains four articles that, although connected by a common thread, are designed as independent standalone papers. In Chapter 2 I examine the risk factor section of 529 prospectuses from firms that went public of US stock exchanges in 1995 and 1996. Using this data I create a comprehensive content cognitive map of 98 risk factors at represent the content of IPO field's risk knowledge structure. I then identify three methods for measuring these risk factors—pervasiveness, priority, and proportion. Following this I examine how the IPO field structures the risk knowledge structure. In Chapter 3 I use the content map developed in Chapter 2 to test whether I can use this information to predict firm performance. Using the IPO data, I develop several risk measures and compare these to existing proxy measures. I then use multiple regression analyses to test the reliability and validity of the various measures. The final result is a risk factor measure, the BROAD measure, which produced the most consistent results. In Chapter 4 I expand the investigation by examining'how firms and fields make sense of strategy and how it relates to the risk factors. In this chapter I compare three fields with differing" levels of institutionalization to see whether I can find unique institutionalized outcomes—industry recipes—about risk and strategy. In this Chapter I find strong support for the idea that fields have distinctive industry recipes. The results show that the dynamics of these industry recipes differ according to the level and type of institutionalization. Finally, in Chapter 5 I test firm level cognitive maps against the field level industry recipes to examine whether conformity, convergence, or divergence matter to IPO performance. There is some support for the idea that firm conformity to an industry recipe improves firm performance. Additionally, in some institutional conditions, convergence toward an industry recipe also improves IPO performance. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This thesis comprises three essays dealing with information and learning in business decision-making. The first essay presents a theory explaining the existence of dedicated financial intermediaries (i.e., venture capitalists) who serve the entrepreneurial sector. Building on the well-established idea that informational asymmetries are central in entrepreneurial financing, the main hypothesis is that venture capitalists exist precisely because they develop special expertise in reducing information-based market failures through careful selection, monitoring, and other means. The primary contribution of this chapter lies in linking the theoretical structure to detailed evidence on venture capital investment in Canada. Specifically, the theory suggests four empirical predictions. It is argued that the evidence is consistent with these predictions and therefore with the central hypothesis. In the second essay, two agents, an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, engage in repeated, ultimatum-style bargaining about a two-dimensional financial contract. They base their offers on simple heuristics, which are processed by a genetic algorithm. The algorithm captures some fundamental principles of human learning. A simulation experiment reveals that with incomplete information, disagreement and delays in bargaining are observed more frequently than under complete information. This can be explained by the sensitivity of agents' learning to information. It is also found that the agent in the weak bargaining position might benefit from incomplete information. The third essay explores a range of hypotheses that might explain differential intra-industry firm performance. A behavioral model is developed in which simple rules guide firms on whether to adapt internally and/or imitate others in order to effect organizational change. This dynamic, multi-period model, in which firms simultaneously compete, is simulated under assumptions which correspond to the hypotheses about differential firm performance. Results reveal that stochastic managerial choice and organizational inertia are plausible sources of differential firm performance. Experiential learning, in and of itself, has only limited influence on heterogeneous firm performance. Interestingly, imitation may be an undesirable strategy for underperforming firms either because it is aimed at a "moving target" or because the targeted market niche is already crowded. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

M.Comm.

M.Ing. (Engineering Management) / The Bull survey of 1998 [1]; conducted by Spike Cavell in the UK was used to identify major causes of IT project failures. The survey showed that failures due to missed deadlines accounted for 75% and the inability to meet project requirements accounted for 37% of the failures. The failures were mainly due to requirement changes during the project. Project requirements are laid out during scope planning phase of project management life cycle and all risks are assumed to be known during the planning phase of the project [2], [3], [13]. The project management process involves a finite number of key life cycle management phases from initiation to closure [2]. The project management body of knowledge (PMBoK) states that every project is managed by the project management triangle the relationship between scope, time and cost [43]. Changes in the project management triangle may cause failure to the project [15]. Projects are considered to be unique endeavours [43]; and using a “one size fits all” approach to find a solution to solve project failure will be impossible [39]. This presents a significant challenge; developing a framework to limit project failures which will widely be applicable to projects. The research study will apply a well-developed concept of agile project management to an organisation that is experiencing high project failure rates to determine if agile principles may be used to reduce project failures. The research will also look at the factors affecting the adoption of agile principles in large organisations. Specifically the research will look at the effects of the environment that the organisation operates in and the effects of the organisational structure. Action research is chosen as the research methodology in order to understand and improve the inefficiencies within the organisation. This gives a practical account for any organisation and adds to the project management body of knowledge.

M.Com. (Business Management) / Any organisation being it at local authority or private sector concern operates in an ever changing and dynamic macro-environment. The City Council of Nelspruit realised this fact and conducted a situational analysis 10 conjunction with the National Productivity Institute during the first half of 1989. The situational analysis established that departmental plans and actions were not effectively coordinated and focussed towards the attainment of goals and objectives. Certain recommendations followed and as a result a strategic management model was implemented during the second half of 1989. Local Authorities find themselves since then. and even more since the promulgation of the Local Authorities Transitional Act (214 of 1993). in an even more volatile and dynamic macro-environment. It was therefore decided to conduct a literature search in order to recommend a recent and applicable strategic management model to the City Council of Nelspruit. The fact that local authorities forms part of the structure of government is pointed out while the unique role and function of local authorities in the process of governance is stressed. Attention is also given to important differences between public sector and private sector concerns. Particular attention is also given to the strategic management model as devised by Pearce & Robinson (l991: 11). This model describes strategic management as "the set of decisions and actions that result in the formulation and implementation of plans designed to achieve a company's objectives". In the study special attention is given to the implementation of the strategic management model. Strategic managers' attention is drawn to the fact that the organisational structure should he supportive to the chosen strategy. Management's attention is also drawn to the fact that the desired organisational culture is of utmost importance for the successful implementation of strategic plans. The literature search clearly indicated that the strategic management model of Pearce & Robinson (1991: II) can be implemented at the City Council of Nelspruit because it provides a step by step process whilst allowing management to take cognisance of the unique circumstances of the organisation. The use of checklists for the implementation of the strategic planning model is recommended. Each checklist provides management with a number of questions to guide the implementation process. Certain recommendations are made in the last chapter of the study. First of all it is recommended that the suggested strategic management model be implemented by means of checklists. Secondly, that councillors and officials be trained in the principles of strategic management. The strategic plan should thirdly be published and communicated to an the stakeholders and fourthly that the value of strategic management and the influence of the integration of local authorities be researched.

M.Com. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This dissertation explores strategic planning in federal agencies. The research seeks to uncover difficulties federal agencies experience when making strategic plans, to explore the relationship between these difficulties and the degree of publicness of the agencies, and to uncover and describe techniques used by federal agencies to overcome difficulties. The research is important because strategic planning has gained renewed interest in federal government organizations stimulated by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 and there are few empirical studies on strategic planning based on the public character of these organizations. The results present the difficulties and techniques reported by planners in eighteen separate federal agencies and show a relationship between the degree of publicness of the agency and the difficulties encountered in strategic planning. / Ph. D.