Business process reengineering (hereafter referred to as BPR) was revolutionary during the early and mid 1990’s. Numerous authors wrote articles and books to appraise the concept and discuss the possible benefits of it. However, the question could be asked whether BPR is still of any relevance in 2001 in South Africa? This question was answered by James Champy in an article published in the Sales & Marketing Management magazine (1998:26) where he stated that: “It has hardly begun. Why? Principally, because we have yet to experience the full effect that the ubiquity of information technology (hereafter referred to as IT) will have on the way we operate. By (that) I mean the omnipresence of highly portable computing and telecommunications devices in the workplace and in the home, combined with the increase in computer literacy and comfort on the part of most adults…and then there is the exploding Internet phenomenon that has provided a platform for universal communications, along with a whole new infrastructure for doing business.” The opportunities for BPR that go hand in hand with the implementation of e-business are numerous and makes BPR as relevant as e-business itself. This is supported by an article in Computerwold published in December 2000: “Today, e-business initiatives have made the need to streamline, integrate and automate processes even more pressing” (Ulrich, 2000) With electronic business still a mere infant in South Africa, and specifically in the short-term insurance industry, its full development can have significant implications on the way businesses operate. A second motivational factor for undertaking this research was personal awareness of the following misconceptions by certain businessmen: - That BPR refers to restructuring, retrenchments and the implementation of IT systems; and - That BPR should be implemented in industries where inventory plays a significant role, e.g. the manufacturing or distribution industries. The following chapters of this dissertation will strive to prove that these are misconceptions and that BPR is based on sound business principles, which include much more than downsizing or the implementation of new IT systems. Very often, a negative connection is drawn with BPR where companies claimed that they have implemented BPR, but in fact, only retrenched staff or implemented new information systems. The dissertation will further strive to prove that the implementation of BPR can also be introduced in industries with no inventory, such as the financial services industry, and with spec ific reference to the short-term insurance industry. / Prof. T.L. Voogt

Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology) / As a key on-going concern for modern organisations, effective leadership is the focus of this study. Effective leadership is probably the primary factor in how well organisations deal with on-going change. This creates successful organisational cultures that are conducive to employee engagement in order to achieve outcomes of great customer service, which in turn will have desired business results. Leadership effectiveness is defined as the extent to which a leader achieves the consequences intended. In other words, that which I as a leader envisaged as an outcome of my actions has been achieved. In reality, one finds big mismatches between what leaders intend and the outcomes of their actions. This has perplexed me, even in cases of well-meaning leaders who did aspire to making themselves and their organisations more effective. This ineffectiveness has remained, notwithstanding a myriad of leadership advice on what constitutes “good” leadership, and how to implement such advice. The advice and its implementation have a poor record. At a very minimum, this advice fails because it is not actionable, and simply represents that which somebody else espouses, but cannot enact. These mismatches between what leaders say and what they actually do in practice lead to leaders being ineffective. The study endeavours to assist the executives who participated in this study in becoming aware of the root causes of this ineffectiveness. In particular, this study proposes a theory of action (Action Science) approach to explain why there is a gap between the espoused values of leaders and their actions. A theory of action asserts that human action is not accidental, it is deliberately planned, i.e., all human beings have a particular picture, model or belief of how to view the world in their minds, and go about executing a particular task within the constraints of this model.

Magister Commercii - MCom / The use of one form or another of team based work organization (TBWO) management policies and practices by firms with the aim of improving organizational performance and employee morale is well documented in popular literature. Empirical research has however found that the implementation of TBWO management policies and practices such as TB training, TB incentive schemes, participation in decision making, work teams etc. had minimal influence on the performance of firms (Locke and Schweiger, 1979). This research investigated the factors, which account for the effective implementation of TBWO management policies and practices with specific emphasis on three firms in the metal fabrications sector. The reason behind the choice of the three firms in the metal fabrication sector in the Western Cape was that these sites offered a rare opportunity to study the process of the implementation of TBWO. It was a rare opportunity because not many firms have embarked on implementing TBWO in South Africa. It was envisaged that the lessons that emerged from this study would be invaluable for firms that intended implementing workplace change. The level of analysis was the shop floor level at the firms as research has shown that this is the level that plays a critical role in the effectiveness of the TB management policies and practices implemented by the firms. / South Africa

This dissertation is an examination of the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) philosophy. The dissertation approach is to analyse the BPR philosophy through segmenting it into seven critical elements. These are elements that needs to be in place to ensure BPR success. Some of the critical elements are sub-components of BPR, while some others, such as the Balanced Scorecard and Project Management, are similar management philosophies that compliment the BPR approach. The seven elements examined are: 1. The identification of Economic Value Adding opportunities of Business Process Re¬engineering. 2. Aligning Business Process Re-engineering initiatives with organisational strategy by means of the Balanced Scorecard. 3. The utilisation of Best Practices and Benchmarks during the Business Process Re-engineering effort. 4. The utilization of Best Practices and Benchmarks during the Business Process Re-engineering effort. 5. Project Management techniques applicable to Business Process Re-engineering projects. 6. Implementation Drivers that helps ensure the success of Business Process Re-engineering. 7. Capturing of Business Process Re-engineering designs in Business Architectures. By no means are these the only elements involved in BPR, but it does form an essential structure for it. None of these elements are ground breaking new research subjects, although most of them are very topical in the business world at the turn of the millennium, and some are still going through growth pains in terms of practical validation. The scope of explanation for these BPR elements is kept at a practical and understandable level, with some deep drills into detail. The main objective of this dissertation is to offer a group of elements that can be used as a whole, or as selective tools during any type of Business Process Re-engineering effort. All these elements will be referenced against experiences from the industry in the form of an actual Business Process Re-engineering project that incorporated all these elements and results from their use. The dissertation deliverable is a usable composition of elements, or a BPR toolbox that can be used by Business Process Re-engineering practitioners as an aid in their efforts. / Dissertation (M Eng (Industrial Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Industrial and Systems Engineering / unrestricted

The modern era has brought the phenomenon of organisational change closer to the average person. With the recent financial crisis placing more strain on businesses, organisations are always under pressure to review their business models in order to deliver a sustainable operational model and as result, hopefully a sustainable competitive advantage. In order to remain competitive, the leadership team has to constantly seek ways of differentiating their organisations from others with similar product offerings. When these changes are initiated, there is no doubt that the leadership gave extensive thought prior to execution. However, their motives are not always clear to their most important constitution, their employees. Often when these changes are implemented, employees believe that they’ve been left out of the decision making process. Furthermore, post change review with employees are also not given enough thought and are often not done. This research used qualitative research methods to establish how employees experience job satisfaction and organisational climate subsequent to changes that transpired within their work environment. Semi-structured interviews and document analysis were used to collect data. The interviews were constructed by expanding upon well-documented quantitative dimensions of these behavioural variables. Questions were developed focusing on these dimensions in line with the changes experienced. The sample consisted of nine employees at an employee wellness organisation in Roodepoort, Gauteng. There is evidence to show that in this short period of two years (May 2012 to June 2014), by implementing various changes, the new leadership has improved the financial viability of the organisation. However, insights from the interviews point to a number of areas where the leadership and management structures have to exert more effort. Communication processes have to be reviewed, especially to lower levels. As there exists limited opportunities for promotion, investigations into expanding existing roles, again at the lower levels may assist in raising job satisfaction levels. Employees felt that support structures are severely lacking when significant changes affecting them are implemented. A climate for innovation and risk taking has to be considered which, if instituted, could aid the organisation in setting the pace for the organisational wellness industry. The structure adopted for this research consists of three sections. Section one follows the evaluation report format, with the literature review and research methodology sections following thereafter. By making use of established literature as a basis, the findings and recommendations are therefore not exclusively applicable to this organisation. Hence other organisations intending similar change initiatives could benefit from this research.

A lot of attention over the years has been focused on understanding employees resistance to change. A few researchers have provided insights into the reasons why some employees remain positive and engaged during times of uncertainty and changes in the organosation. To help build this knowledge area the study was aimed to investigating the factors that drive employee engagement during change. One-hundred-and-twenty employees, across a cross-section of jobs at a specific bank in South Africa, were surveyed. The empirical results obtained from the survey showed that independent variables such as dialogue, organisational culture and a clear4 career plan were congruent with the expected results. In other words these vriables displayed a significant association with the de[endent variables (e.g. job involvement, organisational commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour.).

Mergers have been described as the most complex business process that an organisation can be faced with, requiring executives and other stakeholders to discharge the promise of a more successful merged organisation. However, several studies have highlighted the factors that led to the demise of the merged organisations. One of the often quoted and frequently blamed aspects related to merger failure has been the lack of effective post-merged organisational culture integration and alignment. Where mergers have been successful, it was attributed to a structured approach to integrating and aligning all aspects related to organisational culture thus ensuring the creation of a high performing organisation, conducive to effective performance management. The main research problem in this study centred around the identification of strategies that could be used to design an integrated model for creating a post-merged organisational culture which is conducive to effectively managing performance. To achieve this objective, the following approaches were adopted: A literature study was conducted with the view to identifying the challenges facing merged organisations in general and post-merged South African Higher Education institutions in particular. The researcher also conducted interviews with senior HR practitioner at the institutions participating in this study to gain insights into their experiences of performance within their merged institutions. The institutions involved in this study were Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT and Durban University of Technology (DUT). The insights gleaned from these interviews were incorporated into the survey questionnaire. The literature study also concerned itself with the identification of strategies that merged organisations could use in its pursuit of organisational culture alignment and integration. These strategies included conducting critical pre-merger assessments or due-diligence studies, adopting structured approaches to dealing with resistance to change, employee engagement, the design, implementation and communication of monitoring and evaluation of merger success measures as well as several other moderating variables referred to in figure 1.2. In terms of sub-problem six of the study, the findings of sub-problems one, two and five were used to develop an eight-step integrated theoretical model to create an organisational culture conducive to effective performance management in a post-merged environment. The model served as a basis for the design of a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was used to ascertain the extent to which respondents from the three participating institutions (NMMU, CPUT and DUT), perceived the various strategies as being important in establishing a post-merged organisational culture conducive to effective performance management. The results that emerged from the empirical study showed a strong concurrence with the strategies identified in the literature study and included in the integrated theoretical model. The quantitative and qualitative results from the empirical study where incorporated into the integrated theoretical model, which lead to a refined Eight-Step Integrated Post-merged Organisational Culture Creation Model as depicted in Figure 7.1 with associated details in Figure 7.2.

Tourism has been acknowledged for the past decade as one of the leading driving forces for economic development in post-apartheid South Africa (Nel & Binns, 2002:189). The objective of this study was to investigate the determinants of corporate entrepreneurship for firms in adventure tourism sector in the Eastern Cape Province; South Africa. The population for the study were firms registered with the Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism Portal (NMBT) and the Dirty Boot Adventure South Africa. Convenience sampling method was used. Data was collected through the use of a self-administered questionnaire. For the purpose of data collection, one hundred and fourteen questions were identified through a thorough review of the literature. Principal component analysis was used to reduce the one hundred and fourteen questions to twelve factors namely: flat organisational structure, management support for intrapreneurship, vision and strategic intent, rewards / reinforcement and sponsorship, innovativeness and creativity, multi-disciplined teamwork and diversity, entrepreneurial leadership, resources and time, strong customer orientation, continuous cross-functional learning, tolerance of risk, mistakes and failure and work discretion and discretionary time. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation, T-test and ANOVA. Cohen`s (d-value) was used to measure the effect size of differences for t-statistics. The Cronbach’s alpha was used to test the reliability of the scales. The results showed significant positive relationships between the twelve factors and corporate entrepreneurship. Recommendations included an integrated framework that could assist adventure tour operator to establish and sustain corporate entrepreneurship within this sector.

Taking a positive psychology approach, this research looked at a little-studied subset of working women and men - those who experienced changes affecting their work and self-reported as handling them well. The primary purpose was to explore what strategies they employed that helped them handle change well, what hindered doing well, and whether there were things that would have been helpful but were unavailable. There were two secondary purposes: (1) to gain insight into the nature of the changes they had faced, the impacts of those changes, whether they had always handled change well, and if not, when that changed and why; and (2) to explore whether the research interview itself had an impact on participants. This was primarily a qualitative, exploratory study that used the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) (Flanagan, 1954) to elicit helping and hindering critical incidents and wish list items; and open-ended interview questions (Cozby, 1997; Palys, 1997) to gather information about participants' experiences of change. A quantitative component was embedded in the form of a pre- and post-interview scaling question (Palys, 1997) to determine if the interview had an impact. Data from the CIT portion of the study elicited ten helping, hindering and wish list categories: (1) Personal Attitudes/Traits/Emotional Set; (2) Support from Friends and Family; (3) Internal Framework and Boundaries; (4) Taking Action; (5) Self-care; (6) Support from Professionals; (7) Management Style and Work Environment; (8) Skill/Role Competence; (9) Support from Work Colleagues; and (10) Personal Life Changes/Issues, suggesting strategies can be employed that facilitate handling change well. Data from the quantitative portion resulted in a borderline large effect size, suggesting the interview had an impact on participants. Surprisingly, results from participants' stories of change and its impacts strongly paralleled results of studies in the unemployment, transition, burnout, and posttraumatic growth literature, suggesting this sample of workers was dealing with chaotic environments in many domains of their lives and even though they self-reported as doing well with the changes they were facing, there was a cost involved. Implications for workers, counsellors, vocational psychologists, career counsellors, human resource professionals, organizations, and future research and theory are discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to develop a reasonably comprehensive scheme of categories that describes what facilitated and hindered adaptation to corporate restructuring. Interviews were conducted with individuals who worked in a company during reorganization and adapted. The Critical Incident Technique (Flanagan, 1954) was utilized to elicit 543 incidents from 28 participants. Thirty-four categories emerged from the analysis of the reported events and were organized into five clusters. Several procedures were employed to examine the soundness and trustworthiness of the categories. The results indicate that adaptation was hindered by: enduring a negative state, receiving increased workload, experiencing negative attitudes of colleagues, termination of colleagues, destabilizing moves, encountering a demoralizing situation, removed from a position, experiencing devaluation of company, excluded from decision making, blocked from accomplishing a task, not receiving support, receiving a threat about job, experiencing estrangement, receiving disaffirmation for job competence, and vital information withheld. However, individuals can take action in four ways to facilitate adaptation. First, they can shape the work environment by: refusing exploitative requests, making a decision concerning work, discovering and adhering to a firm guideline, making a beneficial change in the work setting, accomplishing a task, experiencing a challenging task, creating a work position, creating space to work, and dissociation from a bad person. Second, they can gain support by: receiving advice, receiving personal support, receiving assurance about job, experiencing camaraderie, receiving affirmation for job competence, receiving vital information. Third, they can help others by: giving empathy, using humor, forming a relationship, looking out for others, providing practical help, securing work for others. Fourth, they can help themselves by: realization of a positive perspective, preparing for change, initiating a change outside of work, and engaging in an activity outside of work. The category system attempts to provide a reasonably comprehensive description of what helps and hinders adaptation to corporate restructuring. Such an organization of factors may be valuable in planning counsellor training programs and useful for therapists working with individuals adapting to corporate change. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate