Magister Commercii - MCom / The South African government has earmarked the Travel and Tourism industry as a key sector for economic growth as it plays an important role in stimulating the South African economy. Over the last few years the industry has placed greater emphasis on tour packages being offered to tourists, with one key group, Inbound Tour Operators, emerging to fulfil this important role. However, there have been limited studies conducted in the South African context which aim to isolate generalizable key success factors (KSFs) in the Travel and Tourism sector. By focusing on two important research streams, competitive advantage and international entrepreneurship, this study identified nine main KSFs. These KSFs were developed using Thomas and Long's KSF model (Thomas and Long, 2000). The general research approach was a qualitative, multiple-case study whereby six firms were selected from the inbound tour operator sub-sector of the SA tourism industry. The research methodology used in-depth interviews which were conducted with an industry expert and owner-managers of small, mediumand large inbound tour operators, serving and operating in international markets. This helped to gain an understanding of the complex and intricate ways that these firms comprehend KSFs and build their international strategy. As a result of this research approach, it was possible to identify how these KSF variables are influenced through management's decisions and how they essentially affect the overall competitive positions of the various firms in the industry. It also led to novel findings which challenged conventional international entrepreneurship thinking, such as the Uppsala approach, on the basis that firms do not only follow sequential steps when internationalising their businesses. It was found that entrepreneurial firms internationalise their businesses from the outset and extensively leverage off of internet-based technology and utilise export-based activities to engage international markets. The implications of the findings show that existing and new tour operators entering the tourism industry have clear KSFs which they can target in order to achieve success. These factors are variables which management can influence through their decision-making and affect the overall competitive positions of their firm in the industry. Nonetheless, further studies are required to identify KSFs in the other sectors within the tourism industry to provide valuable insights regarding how the international competitiveness of the local tourism industry as a whole may be improved.

Magister Commercii - MCom / The research identified Site C area of Khayelitsha, a township in the Western Cape province of South Africa, as the case study. Khayelitsha has an estimated population of 1.2 million people, and has about 22 sub-sections or areas. Khayelitsha is made up of old formal areas and new informal/formal areas. Site C, is an area which was built up around one of the old formal areas, and contains a high number of informal settlements, RDP houses, and informal backyard dwellers. The study’s primary objective is to identify what factors the business owners themselves regard as being critical for their own personal success, as well as that of the business they own. The secondary objectives were to determine what the make-up of these identified success factors were, and what their respective contribution was to the overall success of the business, as well as what interventions (if any) could make these identified success factors more effective. Qualitative data was requested from each of the participants over the various questionnaire development phases, to obtain a basic and detailed picture of each owner and their business, and to enable a detailed descriptive analysis of each participant. During the literature reviews of the Small Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) sector in South Africa, many sources identified the possible failure factors. These failure factors had extensive references to studies which focused primarily on the small and medium enterprises versus the micro enterprises component. The level of data available on micro enterprises indicated a significantly lower level of relevant data, than the data available on the small and medium enterprises component. The identification of the success factors is equally important as a valuable contributor to understanding the significant failure rate of start-up businesses within the SMME sector in South Africa. This thesis will consult literature studies that discuss these challenges. It will have an emphasis on the micro enterprise sub-sector within the broader SMME sector. The inequitable number of data between the micro enterprises and the small to medium enterprises is confirmed by the literature review. The core focus of the research is to hear from the established micro entrepreneurs themselves and what they identified over the course of their business existence, as being the key factors that enabled their success to date, as well as moving toward the future. The findings indicated that success factors are indeed identifiable from the entrepreneurs themselves. These factors included the education and training level of the entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial capacity of the entrepreneur, the access to financial resources, the specific business retail mix and the uniqueness of the specific business within its immediate locality. Whilst the owners’ success (and by default the business as well) is the priority of this research, the equally important failure rate of small business initiatives in South Africa is of concern, and are the proverbial other side of the coin. Small businesses are playing a vital part in our global economy and in particular in terms of job creation and poverty alleviation. The two pillars of the governments micro enterprise rollout is through the Department of Social Development via poverty alleviation programs which have at their core, essentially micro enterprise formation. The other pillar is via the Department of Trade and Industry in respect of job creation and empowerment as objectives. In South Africa much emphasis throughout the Integrated Small Business Strategy is placed by national, provincial and local governments on Small, Medium and Micro enterprises (SMMEs), to drive job creation and poverty alleviation. Therefore, an investigation into the factors contributing to the success of SMMEs is of vital importance. Recent changes in statistical data gathering methodologies have enabled greater understanding of the contribution of especially the smaller enterprises in the informal sector. The extensive literature consulted, put this figure as high as 80% of economic activity in developing countries. This by itself makes it critically important as an employment option for the retrenched, school leavers, graduates and the unemployed in general. Only willing participants were interviewed and were randomly selected based on the criterion of being in business continuously, for at least 5 years. This target population’s value is unique because they fall into the 20% category of small businesses who survive the first 3.5 years of business, as well as being in the even more elite and valuable niche of 2.10% of South Africans who are running firms older than 3.5 years. These two features are both exceptional and generates’ a unique further study opportunity. The opportunity is to identify why the other 80% of start-ups failed over the initial 12 - 48 month period since start-up. The specific focus area of this research is to identify the success factors of retail micro enterprises located within the case study area, being Site C Khayelitsha. The broad findings of the study of successful retail micro-enterprise owners in Site C Khayelitsha, indicate that their prior quality of education, the presence of role models in their social circle influenced their motivational aspect to start a business, their personal management skills levels were a significant feature in their success as well their exposure to, and understanding of business and how it works; were all crucial to their success.

This research focuses on project complexity with the aim to better understand it and to highlight the factors that affect/contribute to it. In addition, this research also highlights key project management practices and project critical success factors considered important to manage project complexity/complex projects. The two main motivating factors behind this research were, the lack of understanding of complex projects and the lack of relevance of project management theory to practice, which have been highlighted by many researchers. Since projects in different sectors are increasingly being characterised as complex, this entails a better project management knowledge base focusing on the dynamic, social and complex contexts of projects, so that the interrelationships, interdependencies and uncertainties between different project interfaces can be understood and managed properly. In order to understand this 'project actuality', it was necessary to obtain the views from practitioners working in these project settings and managing project dynamics and intricacies. To establish this pragmatic view, a series of interviews and questionnaire surveys was carried out and all efforts were made to select the participants working on complex projects with complex products falling under the Complex Product Systems (CoPS) category which was the case in the 2nd phase interviews and questionnaire, whereas in the 1st phase practitioners with industrial experience and also involved and/or in the process of getting academic qualification in project management were preferred. The first phase helped in establishing the theoretical and pragmatic perspective and the 2nd phase in refining and validating the findings. The questions were inline with the research focus mentioned earlier.The main findings of the research show that the perception of project complexity and its contributing factors were very much influenced by the project context, i.e. from organization level to work discipline level. No difference in the practitioners' perception of project complexity and its contributing factors was observed among the practitioners based in a similar organization and project setting. Novelty was found to be one of the key project complexity characteristics related to three project elements-people, product and process. In terms of key project management practices and skills considered important in managing project complexity, soft skills were reported useful by majority of the participants. The key processes found useful were either the ones which focused on people or others which helped to manage changes/deviations in projects. Influence and relationship, delegation, flexibility and trust were the main project critical success factors which emerged out of this research for complex projects.

Esta tese de doutorado tem como objetivo a definição dos fatores determinantes para o sucesso na Gestão da Manutenção, buscando identificar e explorar seus elementos estratégicos, bem como estabelecer uma estrutura lógica de implementação desses fatores e de elaboração de planos diretores de manutenção na indústria. Para atingir os objetivos, foi empregada a técnica de grupos focados e realizadas as seguintes etapas: i) identificação dos fatores determinantes do sucesso da gestão da manutenção; ii) definição da estrutura para elaboração do plano diretor da manutenção; iii) definição do conjunto de indicadores chaves para o controle do desempenho das atividades de manutenção e iv) aplicação da estrutura proposta na definição do plano diretor de manutenção da planta industrial de Carajás da Empresa Vale para o triênio 2014 – 2016. Como resultados, o estudo determinou 13 fatores de sucesso para a Gestão da Manutenção, entre eles estão: Sistemas Computadorizados de Administração da Manutenção, Sistema de Planejamento e Controle da Manutenção e Sistema de Custeio da Manutenção. Baseado nesses fatores, foi determinada uma estrutura para a construção e revisão anual de planos diretores de manutenção. A utilização desse novo modelo na planta industrial de Carajás possibilitou estimar os seguintes ganhos: i) redução em 20% da taxa de acidentes pessoais; ii) elevação das disponibilidades físicas das plantas com potencial de faturamento líquido de R$ 299,1 milhões; e iii) redução no orçamento da manutenção em 13,3%, o que representa uma redução de custos na ordem R$ 18,63 milhões. / This thesis aims to define the factors for success in Maintenance Management by seeking to identify and explore its strategic elements, as well as establish a logical structure to implement these factors and determine directive maintenance plans in the industry. To achieve the objectives, focus groups were utilized and performed the following steps: i) identification of the determinant factors of successful maintenance management, ii) definition of a framework for preparing the directive maintenance plan, iii) definition of key indicators to track the performance of maintenance activities and iv) application of the proposed structure in the industrial plant Carajás, of Vale Company, for the period of 2014-2016. As a result, the study found 13 success factors for Maintenance Management, among them are: Computerized Maintenance Management System, System of Maintenance Planning and Control and Maintenance Costing System. Based on these factors, a framework was developed for the construction and annual review of directive maintenance plans. Using this new model in the industrial plant Carajás resulted in the following estimated gains: i) a 20% reduction in the rate of injury, ii) an increase in the availability of physical plants with potential net revenues of R$ 299,1 million, and iii) a reduction in the maintenance budget by 13,3% which represents a decrease of U.S. $ 18,63 million in costs.

In the last 30 years has seen a cutthroat competition among many organizations across the world.The Swedish industries were not an exception in this phase of globalization. However,entrepreneurs in Sweden, especially, in the manufacturing sector, are rapidly losing competitiveadvantage in the global marketing environment, a concern some researchers have attributed tolow productivity, and poor organizational performance. Therefore, this paper will identify criticalsuccess factors in entrepreneurship, with reference to Johnson Controls ManufacturingCompany. The instruments used to collect and analyse data, discourse analysis, interview andopen coding, were tested and proved to be efficient and consistent with the research method.Furthermore, the collected data was tested and found reliable with a high coefficient of 0.8,which is considered qualified. Through the data collection instrument, the study generated eightcritical success factors for Johnson Controls. The factors include leader management andstructure, competitors, manufacturing operational excellence, stakeholder‟s engagement, andproduct. These factors were then cast onto 6 broader themes as generated from open coding,which included top management, human resource, organization culture, quality management, andregulatory practice. These themes were useful in describing and correlating the critical successfactors with the basic units of the organization. Also, based on a discourse analysis, this studywas able to establish that there is a strong relationship between primary data and secondary data.Therefore, the study concluded that the eight identified critical success factors, leadermanagement and structure, competitors, manufacturing operational excellence, stakeholder‟sengagement, and product, could be used to change the current status of entrepreneurs in Swedenand help them improve their performance standing in the global business environment.

The purpose of the study is to study, from a teacher's perspective, how music teachers describe how they identify success factors for good musical learning environments in music teaching as well as what teachers need to be able to implement it.. The study has a hermeneutic perspective with the hermeneutic circle as a concept. To study how music teachers reflect and reason about success factors and learning, a qualitative semistructured interview study with music teachers who work at secondary school and high school were conducted. Previous research reports on various factors that influence music education from different perspectives such as teacher education, student, music teacher and evaluation perspectives. Results show that the music teachers are satisfied with their teaching situation in many ways and at the same time they see opportunities for improvement. Improvement opportunities that can be difficult to obtain. The discussion clarifies similarities between the previous research but also differences in how the Swedish music teacher works with student focus as a priority. The discussion provides suggestions for further research on the subject where the researcher sees further research on whole and half class in music education and how students view the quality of music education within it.

Increasing population and urbanization motivates the capability of consuming more fashion goods than ever. This push creates more momentum on global companies to focus on clothing sectors. Recent advancements, including globalization and e-commerce, have made this sector as one of the top businesses worldwide. Top clothing brands made several strategies to satisfy the stakeholders to sustain in this hot, profitable business. This results in practicing more sustainable strategies, including corporate social responsibility in their clothing business throughout their operations, including the supply chain. However, most of the developed nations are consumers of textiles, which are produced and processed by any of the developing and under developing nations. Meanwhile, achieving sustainability in clothing business includes promoting sustainability in the whole chain of suppliers. Pressure from developed nations urges developing nations to promote sustainable practices in their operations. Several studies discussed the CSR related strategies in textile sectors but failed to explore their critical success factors based on their region. With this concern, this study attempts to study the critical success factors of CSR in textile industries situated in one of the developing nations, China. This study collected the critical success factors from literature and validated with the field experts; then the same were evaluated with the assistance of Chinese textile case industrial managers. Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory tool has been used to evaluate the influential critical success factors of CSR to promote CSR through motivating those most influential success factors. These results could help the Chinese textile industrial managers to further extend strong roots on CSR implementation. Finally, this study sheds some light on future opportunities that exist within Chinese contexts with the implementation of CSR. / Revisión por pares / Revisión por pares

This work seeks to explore the critical success factors that influence the success of Indian small business owners in the Tshwane area. To achieve this, the objective of the study is to confirm whether there are significant differences between a successful and less successful group of business owners in terms of general management skills, personal characteristics and entrepreneurial orientation and financing of the business. Through an analysis of theoretical information and empirical results it is possible to facilitate a better understanding of how Indian entrepreneurs operating in small and medium enterprises sustain success, thus enabling learnings that contribute to the body of knowledge relating to entrepreneurship development in South Africa. From the literature it became clear that cultural dimensions have an impact on the entrepreneurial process. The arrival of Indians to South Africa has also contributed to the Indian culture. The characteristics that describe ethnic entrepreneurs and success factors attributed to their success is described. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are crucial for the development of any country as they offer benefits of economic growth and employment generation. The success factors to sustain SMEs are also described. Data was collected from respondents by means of a convenience sample using a structured questionnaire consisting of 28 questions. A total of 106 useable questionnaires were returned, which were then classified into a successful and less successful group, based on the criteria of annual turnover and employment growth. The classification process resulted in the successful group containing 38 respondents while the less successful group contained 49 respondents. The findings of the study indicate that there are no significant differences between the comparable groups in relation to management skills and finance factors. There are, however, significant differences relating to personal factors, such as the level of education, family support and experience. Finally, an important learning is that the Indian entrepreneurs in this study are similar to ethnic entrepreneurs reviewed in literature. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This paper examines the performance of SOEs in developing countries in competitive sectors such as aviation, telecommunications and energy to ascertain whether there are any common principles that determine such performance. Through a case study analysis and interviews with executive managers of South Africa’s SOEs, the paper will determine whether the common principles ascertained in the successful performance of the other developing countries’ SOEs can be applied to South Africa and whether any differences in principle exist between South African SOEs and other developing country SOEs. The paper uses the strategic management schools of organisational and institutional theory, agency theory and the resource based view to determine if there are any differences in principle between SOEs in South Africa and other developing countries. The paper also explores whether the environments and contexts of the different SOEs materially impacts their performance and ability to create a competitive advantage over a sustained period. A qualitative approach was used given that this is an explorative study, to provide better insights and in-depth discussion on the relatively new issues that have not been studied in great detail before. The main research findings are that successfully performing SOEs from developing countries exhibit certain common factors that can be applied by SOEs seeking to reform and improve their performance across developing countries. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The objective of this study was to uncover the critical success factors that have significant value-added impacts on corporate acquisitions in the lodging industry. Specifically, this study attempted to systematically discover evidence about the determinants of a successful pre-acquisition management process, and the determinants of successful post-acquisition integration, as well as to identify an appropriate evaluation criteria for determining the post-acquisition performance of an acquisition deal. In addition, this study tried to identify important acquisition objectives of hotel acquirers. This study employed an integrated and holistic viewpoint that includes the most critical corporate acquisition issues simultaneously and in a multi-dimensional framework. As a research methodology, a Delphi technique, which is a non-face-to-face communication method, was employed and proved its effectiveness throughout the study. The key question guiding this research is, what are the critical factors in the overall acquisition process that contribute to successful acquisitions? The findings of this study indicate that the most important acquisition objective for acquirers in the lodging industry is to accelerate the growth of their firms. Further, the most important critical success factor for hotel acquirers before the deal is completed is the identification of the trend of the target firm's cash flow from operations, and reliable and valid information about the target is the most significant dimension in the pre-acquisition management phase. The study results suggest that the most significant key success factor in the post-acquisition integration stage for the lodging industry is to plan and establish a post-acquisition strategy as early as possible, even before the deal is done, while the development of an effective post-acquisition transition strategy immediately after the deal is closed is the most crucial dimension in the post-acquisition integration phase. One of the most significant findings of this study was that hotel executives gave relatively higher importance to pre-acquisition management strategy than to the post-acquisition integration process. In terms of post-acquisition performance evaluation criteria, measures from a value-based management (VBM) approach received the highest rank in evaluating the economic gains of corporate acquisitions in the lodging industry. The study results can help to improve hospitality industry academics' and practitioners' understanding of important M&A phenomena leading to significant changes in the industry's competitive landscape. / Ph. D.