M.Com. (Business Management) / Imperative changes in the global economy continue to change the complexion of many organisations in their quest to remain competitive. Hitherto, their strive to have sustainable competitive advantage is challenged by factors such as increased competition, market volatility, geographically dispersed operations, customer awareness, raising workforce diversity and stringent regulatory regimes. These factors have driven, and in turn, have been driven by an increasing complexity of products, services and the processes that create value, resulting in changes in the structural and functional dimensions of the organisation. Equally, industry captains and scholars alike acknowledge the shift in value creating assets from the traditional land, labour and capital to intangible assets such as knowledge and information becoming the most important resources an organisation can muster. The combination and integration of intangible assets such as human resources, structural and relational resources have been grouped under the umbrella of intellectual capital. This study sheds light on the unique variables which accelerate intellectual capital as leverage for optimising competitive advantage and collates them with the case study findings of the research conducted at an international oil and gas company headquartered in South Africa. These variables include human capital attributes, such as competencies, tacit knowledge or experience, communities of practice, and competitive intelligence; relational capital attributes such as brand, customer loyalty, corporate social responsibility, and partnerships or joint ventures; and structural capital attributes such as corporate culture, leadership philosophy, and technology or systems. The research design follows a case study approach and applies the method of content analysis of annual reports and of analysing the content of the oil and gas company, Sasol's, four-year annual reports to establish the disclosure of intellectual capital. In conclusion, this study finds that the realisation of sustainable competitive advantage for any organisation, particularly blue chip companies like Sasol, is the choice to implement a unique wealth-creating strategy, namely leveraging its intellectual capital. This study highlights that intellectual capital has the potential to offer companies sustainable long-term benefits through intangible assets that are inimitable, that is, current and potential competitors would not be able to duplicate of imitate.

The intention of this booklet is to assist unionists, shop stewards and organisers with preparation for wage negotiations. It raises ideas on how to deal with the common arguments that are used by management. This booklet is not a complete guide to wage negotiations. It concentrates mainly on economic factors which form only one part of wage negotiations. The handbook is divided into two sections. Section One deals with: Information about ownership, control and structure of South African companies; How to read and understand the information in a company’s annual report. Section Two deals with wage-related issues and it includes: Inflation; Subsistence levels and other surveys; Wages and wage policy. The booklet concludes with a checklist of information needed by wage negotiators and ends with a glossary of terms and a reference list.

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo general determinar qué relación existe entre la Tecnología Bim y la Productividad en obras Retail en el departamento de Lima. 2016. La población o universo de interés en esta investigación, está conformada por la población motivo de ésta investigación que estuvo conformado por 300 Ingenieros Civiles y Arquitectos, que laboran en obras Retail, con conocimientos en la Tecnología BIM en la ciudad de Lima, la muestra probabilística consideró 60 Ingenieros Civiles y Arquitectos, en los cuales se han empleado las variables: Tecnología Bim y Productividad en obras Retail. El método empleado en la investigación fue el hipotético-deductivo. Esta investigación utilizó para su propósito el diseño no experimental de nivel correlacional de corte transeccional, que recogió la información en un período específico, que se desarrolló al aplicar las encuestas de Tecnología BIM y la encuesta de Productividad en obras Retail de 30 preguntas cada una con escala de Likert, que brindaron información acerca de la relación que existente entre ambas variables. La investigación concluye que: El resultado de Rho de Spearman de 0.775, El cual sirve para saber si hay relación entre 2 variables (BIM y Productividad) indica que existe relación positiva entre las variables, se acepta la hipótesis general, Esto quiere decir que aplicando correctamente la Tecnología BIM en obras de Retail podemos mejorar la productividad, reduciendo gastos de tiempo, recurso, planificación. Por tanto se concluye que: La tecnología BIM optimiza la productividad en obras Retail. This research has the overall objective to determine what relationship exists between BIM and Productivity in Retail works in the department of Lima. 2015. The population or population of interest in this research consists of the reason for this research population was consist of 300 civil engineers and architects, working in works Retail, skilled in the BIM Technology in Lima, the probabilistic sample consider 60 Civil and Architects, Engineers in which the variables have been used: Bim Technology and Productivity in Retail works. The method used in the research was the hypothetical-deductive. This research used for the purpose correlational no experimental design of transactional level court, which collected information over a specific period, which was developed by applying BIM technology surveys and survey works Retail Productivity 30 questions each with Likert scale, which provided information about that relationship between the two variables. The research concludes that: The result of Rho of Spearman 0.775, which is used to indicates that there is a positive relationship between the variables also lies in the level of high correlation and accepts the general assumption. This means that applying correctly BIM Technology in Retails woks we can upgrade the productivity, lowing cost in waste time, resource, and planificación. Therefore we conclude that: The BIM technology optimizes productivity Retail works in the Department of Lima.

We use a sample of 14 OECD countries and 15 manufacturing industries to test for the effect of trade on productivity. Endogeneity concerns are accounted for using the geographical component of trade as instrument as suggested by Frankel and Romer (1999). Our results are in line with previous studies: Trade increases productivity. What is puzzling, however, is the size of the effect: An increase in the export ratio by one percentage point increases productivity in manufacturing by 0.6 percent on average. This is less than half of the effect obtained in previous studies. We discuss likely explanations for this discrepancy. / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

One of the challenges for a manager in a creative profession is how to turn the creative energy of the designers into profitable energy for the company. Creativity and productivity are frequently seen as opposing forces, therefore trying to simultaneously nurture both the innovation and the efficiency of a creative design team can become a frustrating balancing act for managers of these organisations. This research demonstrates how the performance of creative people can be aligned to the commercial goals of a design organisation, and that the perceived clash between creativity and productivity is a result of an incompatibility between the creative style of the company and the management techniques being employed. Executives and employees from fifteen organisations of varying levels of success and creativity, across a spectrum of creative design professions, were interviewed regarding how they accommodate a range of productivity and creativity indicators. In analysing the findings qualitatively, it was discovered that rather than one fixed answer to this question, a range of management techniques are applied and many different creative styles are employed. The research findings show that identifying the creative style of the organisation and the appropriate management technique to match is critical in overcoming this perceived paradox. It provides a diagnostic tool for the creative design organisation to enable them to establish where they are on a spectrum of creativity, or decide where they want to be strategically, and then either adapt or adopt an appropriate management technique to complement rather than constrain their creative style. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Michael R. Langemeier / The objective of this thesis is to examine differences in labor efficiency and to find what is driving those differences among Kansas farms. The results provide a quantified understanding of the variation in labor productivity and labor efficiency relating to three categories of variables: farm characteristics, financial performance, and specialization. This research uses regression estimates from a data set of 1,145 Kansas farms to quantify how farm characteristics are related to labor productivity and labor efficiency. There are two main models. Labor productivity, expressed as value of farm production divided by the number of workers, is regressed on three categories of variables: farm characteristics, financial performance, and specialization. Labor efficiency, expressed as labor costs divided by value of farm production, is also regressed on the same categories of variables. The research found that farm size, managerial ability, and age were the most influential and significant variables in the labor productivity model. Farm size, managerial ability, and land tenure were the most influential and significant variables in the labor efficiency model. Farm size is a variable important to both models, and when evaluated at $100,000 of VFP, labor productivity has a value of 152,122 and a labor efficiency value of 0.271 (all else constant). When evaluated at a VFP of $500,000, labor productivity and labor efficiency improve to values of 217,914 and 0.246, respectively.

M.Ing. / The ability of construction firms to stay solvent largely depends on productivity. Productivity improvement is the key to economic prosperity in the long term. It provides the basis for increasing wages and more prosperous firms. Various methods can be implemented to measure and increase productivity which will result an increased output and efficiency. The aim of this work is to address the methods to be used for labour productivity measurement and improvement in civil engineering context. A case study will be done on a current construction project.

The global and competitive market environments have led to new challenges for both organizations and individuals in them. There has been a major change in the last twelve years since South Africa obtained independence in 1994 leading to internationalization of the economy, the increased use of technology and rapid and technological change. These changes influenced management practices forcing organizations to invest in production machines and other methods in order to stay ahead of their competitors. The importance of equipment is increasing in the advancing and demanding technological era in the South African context. Consequently, proper maintenance is required to keep equipment in top operational form. The objective is to reduce equipment breakdowns, increase equipment reliability and improve productivity.This will result in increased equipment utilization and life, reduced work stoppages and machine slowdowns, closer adherence to production and delivery schedules as well as increased employee morale. The Total Productive Manufacturing (TPM) concept addresses these goals. The aim of TPM is to keep the plant and equipment at its highest productive level through the cooperation of all areas of the organization. TPM is a partnership between maintenance and production organization to improve product quality, reduce waste, reduce manufacturing cost and increase equipment availability With the increase in the use of technology, and integrated human resources strategy should be introduced to cope with the dynamic needs of technology. One of the most important elements in this equation is the employees of an organization who will operate those machines. Less attention has, over the years, been afforded to these operators since emphasis has been on equipment and productivity. It is important to combine the human resource strategy with equipment utilization to make the manufacturing system efficient and effective. It has been proven that the skills, knowledge and experiences of operators have economic value in the market place and also potential value to an organization because they enable it to be productive and adaptable. A real world case study in the South African environment was carried out at a renowned manufacturing company in order to asses whether the combination of TPM and a human resource strategy can produce improved results. A survey was carried out on two sister companies located next to one another. It was observed that TPM had progressed significantly more in the one company that had better human resource systems than in the other that did not apply an effective human resource system. The main conclusion reached was that when human resource practices are applied properly in and integrated fashion, they will promote machine efficiency and hence increase the productivity of the company. The research highlights the type of human resource practice that needs to be applied to enable operators to be efficient and productive as part of the machine system in a South African context. / Professor L. Pretorius Professor A. Strauss

Prof. W.M. Conradie

The objective of this study was to provide a more complete understanding of the changing pace and nature of production and productivity growth in South African agriculture during the 20th century and the associated changes in research and development (R&D) investments and institutions that affect agricultural input, output and productivity performance. A completely new panel of data was constructed to track investments in agricultural R&D and scientific capacity that took account of the numerous structural and organizational changes that shaped public R&D since 1910. The national agricultural production accounts were also revised to address the legacy of South Africa's history of racial segregation and a multitude of problems that arose in the official time series data due to changes in the underlying statistical methods and procedures. With these new output and input data in hand the evolution of production agriculture over the past century was quantified and described. The modern indexing methodologies deployed in this study, in conjunction with new primary price and quantity data yielded new insights into the economic evolution of South African agriculture over the past century. This study analyses the changing historic patterns of public sector investment in the agricultural sector and identifies the phases in policy evolution against the trends in aggregate spending on agriculture, farmer support and R&D. Following an initial phase of scientific capacity building, the R&D system developed a measure of synergy in its activities as evident in the spending patterns of the national and regional institutes from 1926 to 1971. The concordance of policy and institutional changes with R&D investment, output and productivity trends in the funding of the various research entities came to an end in 1980, and overall public investment in agricultural R&D has stalled since 1978. Growth patterns in multi-factor productivity estimated in this study substantially differ from earlier studies, especially in terms of magnitude, and present different results on the estimates of the growth in agricultural output that is attributable to productivity growth. It was found that not only did the earlier methods yield indexes that overstate growth patterns — thus suffering from aggregation bias in their index numbers — but trended more erratically and in poor concordance to the timing of policy changes. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / PhD / Unrestricted