As the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) has influenced all sectors, and workers who accrued their experience over decades are reaching retirement age, it has become imperative in all sectors to access their knowledge, store it, and share it with new employees to avoid such knowledge being lost. Knowledge management aims to take advantage of the intangible assets that would otherwise be wasted: The knowledge developed and held by the organisations' employees, their accumulated experience, and task-specific knowledge acquired by employees. Hence, the importance of knowledge management (KM) practices in driving organisational growth and profitability is well established. However, there is a paucity of literature regarding the influence of non-technical attributes (employee attitude, organisational culture, and organisational politics) in driving the effective implementation of KM across public sector organisations. Hence, the present study addressed the gap in literature by exploring the non-technical attributes that influence the effective implementation of KM in South African parastatals. The present study was based on the assumption that non-technical attributes are as important as the technical attributes for ensuring effective KM implementation. The study was governed by the Ecological Theory of KM, which endorses that individuals, relationships, and learning communities play an important role, including their interaction with each other as well as internal and external factors that motivate them to share adequate, appropriate, and timely knowledge. This research contributes to the theoretical knowledge within the information systems (IS) community through developing models and theories in the extant literature that may account for the influence of organisational culture and politics in influencing the effective implementation of knowledge management systems (KMSs) in South African parastatal organisations. The evidence suggested that knowledge-sharing behaviour among employees is an important determinant for the effective implementation of KM. Hence, it was speculated that organisational culture and organisational politics might also influence KM implementation within South African parastatals by influencing the employee-related attributes. The ontological and epistemological stances that were considered for this study were objectivism and positivism, respectively. Such stances were adopted because it was contended that the realism related to KM implementation could be estimated through objective endpoints. A mixed-method approach was undertaken to obtain the relevant data from the participants. The subjective responses of the participants were obtained through closed-ended and open-ended questions. Since there are different non-technical factors that could influence the effective implementation of KM, it was hypothesised that a positive organisational culture or a positive employee attitude might not always ensure effective KM implementation. The hypotheses were grounded on the concept that a positive attitude by employees might become undermined by a dominant negative organisational culture, and destructive or over-bearing organisational politics. Under such circumstances, the positive attitude of employees would not be sufficient to influence effective KM implementation. The study showed that attitudes of people and a positive organisational culture significantly influenced an effective KM implementation. One of the novel findings in this study was that organisational politics did not significantly impact the implementation of KM practices (p > 0.05). However, the focus group interviews reflected that the parastatal organisation suffered from leadership challenges, which substantiated the lack of a relationship between politics and KM implementation. The major theory that emerged from this study was that knowledge sharing across a parastatal organisation is governed by the interaction of different knowledge-sharing theories. The novel finding that organisational politics might not significantly influence the effective implementation of a KMS could be explained from the theories of knowledge sharing, which mandate that trait theory and social engagement theory might interact in influencing knowledge sharing across employees of parastatal organisations. If organisational politics do not influence knowledge sharing, the altruistic attributes of an employee may still be sufficient to share tacit and explicit knowledge. Future studies should explore the direct interaction between the positive and negative attributes of people, organisational culture, and organisational politics in influencing an effective implementation of KM across a number of parastatal organisations.

M. Tech. (Department of Logistics Management, Faculty of Management Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / The primary objective of this study was to investigate the supplier relationship management practices at Eskom. Currently, the challenges faced by the parastatal include diminished reserve margin, increased unplanned generation plant outages as well as coal supply and quality constraints coupled with ever-rising primary energy costs. It is, therefore, evident that as a national asset, Eskom cannot overcome the current challenges successfully without strong partnerships with key suppliers. A framework for supplier management containing four different elements was researched. The first element, which forms the basis for all supplier management operations, is the development of supplier management relationships. The framework also includes supplier collaborations and the various aspects of discovery, supplier pre-selection, and supplier selection, which relate to finding, qualifying, and choosing the best suppliers. Lastly, and also very important was the supplier development and localisation as well as the legislature thereof. A quantitative cross-company survey was conducted using a sample of 260 suppliers, who have been on the database for more than twelve (12) months and who responded to the business requests to update the data on the system. The findings of the study are largely supported by the literature. Finally, the study makes recommendations and highlights further research, managerial, and policy implications.

With an estimated 500 infections everyday, the country is beset with a galloping HIV and AIDS epidemic. With these accelerating numbers, it is no longer possible to ignore people living with HIV and AIDS, as they will inevitably form a more and more significant volume of the workforce. A key aspect of this phenomenon, that needs dedicated attention, is the issue of their stigmatisation in the workplace. The intent is to present the voice of the stigmatised. The dissertation attempts to understand how a stigmatised identity affects a productive member of society. It tries to capture the perspective of sero-positive persons as productive members of society and not as `victims' or `threats'. The ultimate objective is to influence policy in the workplace in order to provide a nurturing and productive work environment. The key thought emerging from the research is: driven by the inescapable structural stigma of the workplace, the virus fundamentally influences the self-definition of the sero-positive person. / Sociology / M.A.

With an estimated 500 infections everyday, the country is beset with a galloping HIV and AIDS epidemic. With these accelerating numbers, it is no longer possible to ignore people living with HIV and AIDS, as they will inevitably form a more and more significant volume of the workforce. A key aspect of this phenomenon, that needs dedicated attention, is the issue of their stigmatisation in the workplace. The intent is to present the voice of the stigmatised. The dissertation attempts to understand how a stigmatised identity affects a productive member of society. It tries to capture the perspective of sero-positive persons as productive members of society and not as `victims' or `threats'. The ultimate objective is to influence policy in the workplace in order to provide a nurturing and productive work environment. The key thought emerging from the research is: driven by the inescapable structural stigma of the workplace, the virus fundamentally influences the self-definition of the sero-positive person. / Sociology / M.A.