Municipally Owned Corporations (MOCs) have several interest groups because they are established to serve the public interest. These stakeholders including citizens expect MOCs to deliver high-quality service. MOCs, on the other hand, need to attract and retain the best talents to pursue their mandate. Based on these, service quality and Human Resource performance were conceptualised as key performance indicators for MOCs. This adds to the various performance measures used by other scholars in measuring performance in public sector organisations. In recent times, organisational ambidexterity has become topical in public sector organisations including MOCs as scholars have found it to have an impact on firm performance.  Recognising the role of management in organisational success, this study investigated how two concepts (i.e. Managerial autonomy and Relationship) influence Service Quality and Human Resource Performance and how the relationships are mediated by organisational ambidexterity. A quantitative approach was adopted where 128 CEOs of MOCs in Sweden participated in a survey. The results indicate that managerial relationship and autonomy significantly influences ambidexterity. Ambidexterity was also found to significantly predict service quality and Human Resource performance. While evidence was found for ambidexterity’s mediation affection between autonomy/relationship and service quality, no mediation was found for autonomy and Human Resource Performance. The mediation of ambidexterity between the managerial relationship and Human Resource performance was however partial.  Aside from testing rarely used performance measures (i.e. service quality and Human Resource performance), the study builds on the Leader-Member Exchange theory by finding support for relationship between managerial relationship and service quality, mediated by ambidexterity. The implication is that leaders of MOCs should prioritize building mutually beneficial relationships with their employees to enhance quality service delivery and Human Resource performance.

Over the last decades, there is a constant experimentation on new organizational models and structures by many international companies aiming to overcome the difficulties of a highly competitive global market and satisfy the needs of the customers 24/7. As such, the companies have commonly adopted virtual team strategies using also the technological advancements. In order to optimally use their resources, they have also used matrix organizational structures. In such complex and demanding organizational models, the virtual managers face a lot of challenges in order to effectively lead their teams. Therefore, the required managerial competencies and skills related to an effective team performance are of great scientific interest. The objective of this thesis is twofold. Firstly, this thesis aims to examine how managerial competencies of a virtual manager in matrix organizations influence the performance of a team and what the most important skills of these competencies are. Secondly, it aims to identify the managerial skills that a virtual functional manager and a virtual project leader need in order to effectively manage their teams and compare these skillsets. This study adapts a survey strategy with the use of an online questionnaire and gathers responses from professional engineers that virtually work in matrix organizational schemes mainly based in Sweden and Switzerland. The descriptive analysis of the collected data shows that both type of virtual managers (functional and project) have similar managerial skills which are commonly found in managers working in more traditional organizational models. This is not in line with the findings of our study, since in our analysis we considered the virtuality dimension, for which our results show that it strongly affects the virtual team performance. Therefore, the required managerial competence is formed with skills that are more important in the virtual context than in other traditional models. A second finding is that a virtual functional manager requires different skills compared to the virtual project leader, which suggests that the companies should account for the management role in the hiring process of a specific type of virtual manager. A future research on virtual teams in matrix organizations taking into consideration the different levels of virtuality or broader sampling techniques or case studies per industry would be of a great interest.

Yes / Irrespective of the fundamental role of legitimacy in industrial relations as well as social and organisational life, little is known of the subtle meaning-making strategies through which organisational concepts, such as employment relations and engagement, are legitimised in modern world of work, particularly in developing countries such as Nigeria, which results in managerial capture. As a result, this paper explores the discursive legitimisation strategies used when making sense of employment relations in Nigeria’s conflictual, non-participatory employment relations terrain. Relying on Leeuwen’s (1995) legitimisation strategies, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and call by Bailey, Luck & Townsend (2009) and Legge (1995) to widen employment relations discourse, we explore interview, focus group and shadow report data, and distinguish and analyse five legitimisation strategies. The strategies include authorisation, moralisation, mythopoesis, rationalisation, and management. Therefore, we contend that while these specific legitimisation strategies appear in separate data source, their recurrent manifestation and application underscores legitimising discourse of managerial capture in Nigeria’s employment relations.

Background: With an increasing population and volume in global trade, pressures on supply chains have escalated immensely. Over the past five years, multiple events have caused disruptions in supply chains, affecting economies and products not arriving on time. It is essential for managers to understand why a crisis might arise and how to handle it most efficiently to minimize the impact on the organization.  Purpose: Establish what managers in Sweden have learned from recent supply chain disruptions and how they are responding to the current disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Method: The research was grounded on the interpretivism paradigm with convenience and purposeful sampling. Semi-structured interviews with seven participants were conducted and reviewed through thematic analysis with an inductive and deductive approach induced by exploratory research that led to qualitative data.  Conclusion: The findings in this report resulted in an understanding of the mechanisms used to handle recent disruptions. The focus was on securing the flow of materials through local and multiple suppliers, as well as warehouses with safety stock. Communication, transparency and other intangible competencies were also important. During the ongoing disruption, results showed that more emphasis was placed on local and multiple suppliers, mapping, and world assessment.

Despite more than 60 years of research about the nature of change, resistance to change remains a problem across industries. Health care leaders have limited knowledge of how health care managers' perceptions of empowerment, years of experience, and resistance to change (RTC) relate. The purpose for this nonexperimental correlational study was to examine the relationship between empowerment, years of experience, and RTC among managers via an online survey. The theoretical framework incorporated Kanter's structural empowerment theory and Kotter's change theory. The sample included 245 out of 1,181 health care managers from Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals in the New York metropolitan region, recruited through a nonrandom purposive sampling method. There was a significant association measured between empowerment and RTC (r = -.132, p = .05), but no association between years of experience and RTC (r = .060, p =.348). The regression model showed that years of experience and perceptions of empowerment together in one model was not a significant predictor of RTC (F(2,242) =2.82, p = .062, R2 = .023). In the model, perceptions of empowerment was a statistically significant predictor of RTC (â = -.136, p = .03), but years of managerial experience was not (â = .074, p = .249). These findings, while not generalizable, offer a unique examination of organizational change among an underexamined population. According to study results, as empowerment increased, RTC diminished. In contrast, experience did not relate to the propensity to resist change. These findings have social implications for VA and general business leaders who may use these results to improve change management plans, empower staff, reduce RTC, and enhance organizational and patient outcomes.

In this paper the relation between managerial ownership and conservatism is examined. Managerial ownership decreases agency problems caused by the separation of ownership and control. Managerial ownership increases the time horizon of managers and decreases expropriating behaviour. Conservatism is hypothesized to have the same effect on managers due to the asymmetric timeliness of earnings. This suggest that in firms with lower managerial ownership a demand for conservatism arises to substitute for the alignment function of managerial ownership. This paper test this with two approaches. The first replicates the methodology of previous literature. The findings provide no evidence for substitution between managerial ownership and conservatism. Because the estimators of the first methodology are biased a second method is used applying fixed effects. Consistent with the first approach no supporting evidence is found. However, it finds that firms in the sample have conservative accounting. The main implication of this paper is that rewarding managers with shares is not decreasing their conservative behaviour.

The aim of this study is to conduct a thorough theoretical study on developing a managerial framework for replacing paper based contracts with e-contracts in the agriculture environment in the North-West Province. Every business should adapt to the current economic environment, especially new technology, and need to consider the risk and reward within the industry. Businesses should analyse any new processes and investigate its impact and whether a competitive advantage is created. An extensive literature study has been conducted on the factors that could assist to develop a managerial framework. Firstly, CRM - a good CRM system will improve customer service and increase customer satisfaction, which will yield more loyalty. Secondly, improved technology will shorten the value chain by adding more value to each product or service. Thirdly, new technology, such as e-contracting, will reduce the time it takes to contract with customers and reduce the overall processing costs. Fourthly, training is crucial for any business to be successful. Fifthly, Business Process Management (BPM) system will assist a business to implement a new process. Lastly, it is important to investigate what resistance to change a business can expect. An empirical research has been conducted to investigate the effect what e-contracting has on the agriculture environment in the North-West Province in order to enable the author to develop a managerial framework to assist an agriculture business to improve customer service. It could be concluded that there is a good linkage between the results of this study and the literature. A managerial framework that can be used for the purpose of replacing paper based contracts with e-contracts in the agriculture environment in the North-West Province, has been proposed. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The aim of this study is to conduct a thorough theoretical study on developing a managerial framework for replacing paper based contracts with e-contracts in the agriculture environment in the North-West Province. Every business should adapt to the current economic environment, especially new technology, and need to consider the risk and reward within the industry. Businesses should analyse any new processes and investigate its impact and whether a competitive advantage is created. An extensive literature study has been conducted on the factors that could assist to develop a managerial framework. Firstly, CRM - a good CRM system will improve customer service and increase customer satisfaction, which will yield more loyalty. Secondly, improved technology will shorten the value chain by adding more value to each product or service. Thirdly, new technology, such as e-contracting, will reduce the time it takes to contract with customers and reduce the overall processing costs. Fourthly, training is crucial for any business to be successful. Fifthly, Business Process Management (BPM) system will assist a business to implement a new process. Lastly, it is important to investigate what resistance to change a business can expect. An empirical research has been conducted to investigate the effect what e-contracting has on the agriculture environment in the North-West Province in order to enable the author to develop a managerial framework to assist an agriculture business to improve customer service. It could be concluded that there is a good linkage between the results of this study and the literature. A managerial framework that can be used for the purpose of replacing paper based contracts with e-contracts in the agriculture environment in the North-West Province, has been proposed. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Problem statement: Management accounting is not given enough emphasis, at the board level, as a provider of timely and relevant information to facilitate the execution of good corporate governance. Without management accounting information corporations in Botswana may find it difficult to create sustainable corporate governance. Methodology:A questionnaire was used to investigate the use of management accounting tools by the directors in the target organisations.The researchwas carried out among listed companies on the stock exchange and the parastatal organisations in Botswana. Main findings: Most directors in the organisations don‟t emphasise the use of management accounting in decision making.Management accountants have also failed to provide theinformation at board level. Conclusion:To execute their duties efficiently, directorsmay need to call for more management accounting reports from the senior management level up to the board level and regularly use them to facilitate their decision making. / Management Accounting / M. Com. (Accounting)

The study of leadership is one of those disciplines that invoke fierce debate among scholars and at the centre of the leadership debate lies the many approaches to the discipline that are employed by scholars and these approaches have led to different definitions of the discipline such as the trait theory of leadership, the behavioural theory of leadership and the contingent theory of leadership. This study was undertaken for two main reasons. Firstly, to investigate the leadership behaviour of deputy directors of the Department of Agriculture and secondly, to establish how those leadership behaviour of deputy directors impacted on the employee morale of their subordinates. The study was conducted within the public administration environment and it was conducted using the leadership behaviour theory whose main assumption is that leadership is a relationship between the leader and the followers and as such, the behaviour of the leader has direct impact on the morale of the followers. The key leadership behaviour that were used for the study came from the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) survey instrument that was developed by Kouzes and Posner (2002) and five key factors were identified as central to the study of leadership behaviour for the purpose of this study. Firstly, leaders are expected to act exemplary (model the way) by ensuring that what they say is what they do. Secondly, leaders are expected to inspire a shared vision so that their followers are able to assimilate the vision being pursued. Thirdly, leaders are expected to challenge the existing institutional processes and systems so that all resources can be directed towards the realisation of the new vision. Fourthly, leaders are expected to enable their followers to act by creating an environment that is conducive to effective service delivery and fifthly, leaders are expected to encourage their followers to endure where challenges seem overwhelming so that followers should not be discouraged and give up. Since the study was conducted within the public administration environment, its main purpose was to discover how frequently do deputy directors engage in those five factors. The study yielded mixed results where in some of the factors, deputy directors engaged frequently whereas in the other factors, they had infrequent engagement. The participants to this study were grouped into three categories: deputy directors (as leaders being evaluated), and directors and subordinates (as observers). The study used the Likert scale where the data was interpreted by means of graphs. / Public Administration and Management