No description available.

No description available.

This thesis contributes to the understanding of the effectiveness of marketing strategy making processes. It examines how such effectiveness is contingent upon the internal and external environments in which the process operates and, therefore, how the requisite process is contingent upon its organisational and market context. It builds on the fields of strategy content and strategy process and of organisational effectiveness, organisational culture and organisation theory. It tests and develops Burrell and Morgan’s congruency hypotheses as an explanation of the effectiveness of marketing strategy making processes. That work postulates that effectiveness results when the process is congruent with both its internal environment (i.e. microcongruent) and external environment (i.e. macrocongruent) This work takes a pragmatist epistemological perspective. The methodology is qualitative, using multiple-informant case studies. The congruency hypotheses are operationalised using a model and constructs based on the extant literature. The work is restricted to the medical products market in order to optimise insight and understanding. The findings support the congruency hypotheses. Strong strategy is associated with simultaneous macrocongruence and microcongruence. Further, a mechanism for the hypotheses is identified. Interactions between the strategy process and organisational structure, systems and habits provide an underlying mechanism of microcongruence. Failure or success of the process to manage market complexity and turbulence provide an underlying mechanism of macrocongruence. This work contributes to theory, confirming the congruency hypotheses, extending them into marketing strategy making and making a new contribution concerning the mechanism of congruency. To methodology, this work confirms the use of case studies, extends it to consider simultaneously internal and external environments and makes a new contribution concerning the construct of strategy quality. To practice, the work confirms the value of planning in complex markets, extends the concept of a “requisite” process and contributes new ideas for the deliberate management of marketing strategy making processes.

Human resources can provide a competitive advantage due to the fact that it is valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and has no substitutes. Competitors can duplicate competitive advantage obtained via better technology and products but it is difficult to duplicate competitive advantage that is created through improved management of people. The motivation for the research was to establish whether there was a casual relationship between HR practices and organisational effectiveness and between organisational effectiveness and manufacturing performance. The research also developed a model that could be implemented to enhance business performance. Secondary data formed the primary source of information to obtain business performance indicators and information on the HR practices. While the results indicated that there was no directional relationship between HR practices and business performance indicators, findings of the research provide statistical evidence that investment in HR practices of the organisation will have a positive relationship with business performance. Among the HR practices, performance appraisals and career development has a direct casual relationship with the customer satisfaction perspective. The research can be used within the organisation and as a basis for further academic research. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Organisational structures have a shorter life cycle today than at any point in the past and organisational change is a consistent feature of modern working life. (Whittington&Meyer, 2003) These organisational changes cause turbulence and uncertainty that, in turn, create conflict. (Hart, 2000) Successful companies in the future must create the capability to absorb conflict during the organisation’s life cycles. (Whittington&Meyer, 2003). The aim of the research is to characterise the nature of this organisational conflict changes over the start-up, growth, maturity and decline phases of the organisational life cycle in both South African and American companies.The research was conducted through the use of personal interviews with a structured questionnaire as interview guide. Critical Incident Technique was used in order to qualitatively analyse personal interview data. Unique priority lists for conflict areas exist for companies in the USA and SA. Figure 13 summarises the findings and must serve a quick reference guide to companies to facilitate the understanding of the conflict issues. It should be used identify potential conflict areas to be able to manage change and conflict pro-actively. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Trust between individuals and groups has been identified as an important factor in determining organisational success, organisational stability and the well-being of employees. The present research contributes to the growing literature on trust by developing measures and models of how employees trust senior management. Drawing from the literature and the results of pilot studies, a six dimensional model of trust in senior management - consisting of dispositional, cognitive, affective, social and behavioural intent dimensions - was tested using confirmatory factor analysis (n = 416). The results clearly supported the convergent and discriminant validity of the measurement model. For example, all model fit indices were above minimum recommended values and all items loaded at significant levels on their specified factor.The measures were successfully cross- validated in a sample from a different organization (n = 249). Next, models portraying alternative structural relations between the dimensions were examined, before deriving a model which successfully summarized the data in a theoretically plausible way. The model showed trust in senior management, defined in terms of behavioural intentions, to be directly influenced by affective reactions and perceived social norms. Cognitive assessments about the overall effectiveness of senior management were shown to have an indirect influence on trust. This structural model was successfully cross- validated on an independent sample. The attitudinal dimensions of the model were shown to hold, longitudinally, over a twelve month period (n = 257).In contrast to previous cross-sectional research, disposition did not influence trust in senior management over time. In terms of determining the organizational consequences of trust in senior management, the results showed that trust in senior management influenced cynicism toward change ++ / over a twelve month time period. Theoretical implications and the practical implications for the diagnosis and management of trust in senior management are discussed.

Globalisation has increased competition; hence organisations are required to look within, at their capabilities to create a competitive advantage. The purpose of the study is to firstly investigate the association between ambidexterity and firm performance in the banking sector, and secondly, to investigate the association between ambidextrous capabilities in this sector and their strategic orientation in respect of Miles and Snow’s (1978) typology. This research will take on the form of a quantitative study, which will proceed in the form of a sample survey questionnaire. The target population refers to the banking organisations that make up the financial services sector in South Africa. Results of the study confirmed that the greater the ambidextrous capability (structural and contextual combined) present in the banking sector, the greater the performance. Further, the greater the structural ambidexterity is in this sector, the greater the performance. However the latter showed a weak correlation. It was concluded that innovation is greater in prospectors than defenders. It was further shown that the prospector-combined ambidexterity combination yields the greatest performance when compared to any other combination of strategy and capability. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This research sought to understand the knowledge management (KM) practices in use by networked southern non-profit organisations (NPOs), which directly or indirectly impact on their effectiveness. It explores the realm of NPOs, and the concepts of organisational effectiveness (OE) and KM, with the aim of identifying their interrelationships from a theoretical and practical perspective. The three organisations studied are the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), South Africa NGO Network (SANGONet) and Women’s Network (Women’sNet). Using a conceptually formulated research framework, data gathered was analysed to examine the KM concepts of people capacity, systems and procedures, information and knowledge flow and stakeholder relations within and across all three case studies and their use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) as an enabler. The research concludes with an integrated framework, an addition to the existing body of knowledge on KM theory with key elements for a KM system for effectiveness for networked southern NPOs.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DXN083969.

Organisational effectiveness has always been researchers’ main concern and interest over a long period of the time. Also, organisational culture as the main contributor of organisational effectiveness and its impact has attracted many scholars in different disciplines including organisational studies. While there is an extensive body of literature on the relationship between organisational culture and organisational effectiveness, many of the previous studies in this field have explored the direct relationship between specific culture domains and specific effectiveness measures and researchers have paid inadequate attention to mediators and moderators of the link between organizational culture and effectiveness. In fact, there is an absence of a comprehensive conceptual model of the culture-effectiveness relationship in the literature that includes the impact of mediators such as leadership style or moderators such as national culture and organisational size. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating influence of leadership style and the moderating impact of national culture and organisational size on the culture-effectiveness relationship in private sector organisations in Iran. In order to achieve the research aim and objectives this study is preceded by a systematic review of the relevant literature that leads to the development of a comprehensive conceptual model. Data collected from different management levels of 40 private sector organisations in Iran by using a survey questionnaire with a design based on previous studies, and analysed using the statistical package for social sciences, SPSS V.18. A convenience sample of 1,000 respondents from various management levels of the organisations was established, in which 353 were returned on time to the researcher that create the response rate of 35.3 percent. This research in nature is quantitative, positivist and deductive and uses survey method by self-administered questionnaire because of its obvious advantages when it comes to versatility and speed. The results of this study show that there is a strong relationship between organisational culture, leadership style and organisational effectiveness and, in fact, leadership style is a partial mediator between all four organisational culture types and organisational effectiveness apart from the adhocracy culture type. Moreover, the findings of this study confirm the importance and major impact of national culture and organisational size as moderators on the relationship between organisational culture, leadership style and organisational effectiveness. This study makes several contributions one of which is the presentation of a comprehensive framework that that explains the importance and impact of leadership style as a mediator and national culture and organisational size as moderators on the culture-effectiveness relationship. Moreover, this study provides a novel contribution to the growing literature on the culture-effectiveness relationship in private sector organisations, particularly for developing countries such as Iran. Furthermore, the result of this study provides meaningful managerial implications and can be used as a guide for implementing organisational change including cultural or managerial styles to improve organisational effectiveness.