Burgess (2003) has identified 16 different South African consumer groups. For the purpose of this research, and for the sake of simplicity, the 16 consumer groups were combined into four clusters. The four clusters are the following: the rural survivalist, the emerging, the urbanised middle class and the urban elite consumer group. The main objectives of the research were the following: <ul> <li>To determine the rural consumers‟ perceptions of the corporate image of Pharmaceutical organisations in the greater Bushbuckridge area. </li> <li>To provide guidelines for aligning organizational behaviour more closely with the rural consumers‟ perceptions of corporate image. </li> </ul> Structured interviews were conducted to determine the consumers‟ perceptions on how corporate image should be structured in order to improve healthcare delivery in the pharmaceutical sector in Bushbuckridge. A sample of 850 rural consumers was interviewed and the data obtained were analysed through content analysis and descriptive statistics. The following main conclusions were made: <ul> <li>With respect to corporate social responsibility, the consumers consider HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS treatment and support for pensioners as the most important intervention areas for the pharmaceutical organisations. </li> <li>With respect to corporate business conduct, rural consumers expect leaders to be able to listen, treat people with respect and to act intelligently. </li> <li>Expectations when buying medicine: The respondents expect the pharmaceutical companies to be trustworthy, act in confidence, to be able to analyse and clarify consumers‟ needs. </li> <li>Distribution channels: Respondents prefer to buy their medicine at pharmacies, government hospitals and clinics. </li> <li>Qualities of the sales force: Respondents expect that pharmaceutical companies should emphasise the following services: privacy during consultation, clean environment and training on how to live a healthy live. </li> <li>Pharmaceutical products: Western medicine is preferred in Bushbuckridge. </li> <li>Employee behavior: It is evident from the study that the respondents value “ubuntu”, believe that time is money, are undecided towards the influence of witchcraft in the workplace and also undecided towards the value of the extended family. </li> </ul> The literature review and the resulting empirical survey will assist leaders in the pharmaceutical sector to obtain a better understanding of rural consumers‟ perceptions of corporate image. / Thesis (PhD (Organizational Behaviour))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Human Resource Management / PhD / unrestricted

Fashion entrepreneurs with no formal fashion-related education or training are hereafter referred to by the acronym FEWFFET (fashion entrepreneurs without formal fashion-related education or training). Entrepreneurship provides a feasible means of employment in a country where national unemployment rates are alarmingly high. To succeed, entrepreneurs require business knowledge and skill to operate profitable and sustainable businesses. However, entrepreneurs who were previously disadvantaged often possess only low levels of education, limited qualifications and training. This applies to survivalist fashion entrepreneurs in the Sedibeng District Municipality (SDM) who produce various items of apparel and clothing. Over a third of these entrepreneurs are not formally educated in business management and may not possess the adequate knowledge to operate their fashion business successfully. The research aim was to investigate the uses and challenges pertaining to business skills amongst FEWFFET to determine their business skills training needs. The sample population included 105 black fashion entrepreneurs, operating micro, survivalist enterprises within peri-urban, resource-poor communities in the Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) of Sedibeng, Gauteng. A quantitative study using non-probability purposive sampling and snowball sampling was performed. Interviewer-administered questionnaires were conducted with respondents at fabric and haberdashery stores or within their home-business environments. The results indicated that respondents lacked business plan development skills and showed only moderate skills in finance and marketing. Respondents indicated business skills training needs for developing a business plan, conducting basic bookkeeping, determining correct product pricing, drafting quotations and invoices, developing a budget, conducting basic market research and advertising their products and services / National Research Foundation (NRF)

Poor people benefit from microfinance and positively improve their poverty and socio-economic conditions. Microfinance support serves as development tool to redress the exclusion of the poor from the development process and outcomes in the mainstream intervention frameworks. As developing countries and poverty context are diverse and contextual, comprehensive knowledge about and empirical evidence on the impact of microfinance is scant. Specifically, the impact of microfinance services on the development of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) owned by women is scant. The findings of available studies and policy practice reports on microfinance in Ethiopia are not holistic in terms of a theoretical lens and methodological pluralism. Available studies do not consider the impact of microfinance and non-financial services on women-owned MSEs at household, individual and enterprise levels thereby reducing the poverty context and holistic empowerment at these levels. This study used multiple theoretical and conceptual frameworks: Hulme’s (2000, p. 79 - 81) microfinance impact assessment tool, debates on survivalist and growth-orientation perspectives of MSEs (Harvie, 2003, p. 27; Snodgrass & Biggs, 1996, p. 43; Hallberg, 2001, p. 19; Nichter & Goldmark, 2005, p. 67), women empowerment continuum model of interpretation (Filmon, 2009, p. 87) and policy practice at the epicenter of governance and policy decision-making (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital). The assessment considered three elements of microfinance impact assessment, generating primary evidence from 120 micro and small business owners (women entrepreneurs) whose firms stayed two years and above in the market and as clients of selected microfinance institutions. The clients considered were those who accessed at least two loan cycles and above. The respondents were randomly selected from three randomly selected microfinance institutions and a survey questionnaire was administered. The data sets were analysed using multiple tests (non-parametric statistical tests such as Pearson Correlation, Paired-Sample, Chi-Square, Wilcoxon Rank and McNemar tests) as well as parametric tests were conducted using logit econometric model. These tests were conducted to determine statistical difference of microfinance services after program intervention and the contribution of total loans taken on expenditure and businesses investment. The results indicated both developmental or survivalist firms. The result also indicated the empowerment of the women (MSEs owners). A significant number of women entrepreneurs owning MSEs improved their living house, cash savings, household income, child education, household health, household food and diet, business investment, and decision making status in their households. In terms of policy support, the study identified that there were specific affirmative interventions (as stipulated in the policy documents) to support women entrepreneurs owning MSEs in terms of targeted financial service, provision of working and selling premises, designing and implementing training and skill development programs, market networking and tax support on their products and sales. The study recommends that different institutions that work on women empowerment and women associations have to design women focused affirmative policy and strategy interventions to scale-up the positive results (growth-orientation of the MSEs) and address the bottlenecks that limit women entrepreneurs who own MSEs from accessing services that can transform the survivalist MSEs to profitable and empowering businesses for women. The recommendations are proposed to link women empowerment with working policy support. / Development Studies / D. Ph. (Development Studies)

Ce mémoire vise à étudier les jeux de survie par l’entremise du prisme de la simulation. La plupart des jeux vidéo publiés aujourd’hui présentent des structures « atypique » de jeu qui libère le joueur de toute contrainte prescriptive au profit d’un joué plus expressif. Minecraft (Mojang 2010) est un exemple notoire ne proposant pas formellement ses modalités de jeu au joueur, ce qui confronte les formes ludiques plus traditionnelles telles que le jeu ou le sport dont les objectifs sont d’ordinaire plus commodes à déterminer. Cette tendance des jeux d’aujourd’hui à imposer un pouvoir-faire complexe sans nécessairement prescrire un devoir-faire associé est à la base de plusieurs questionnements encore en suspens. S’imposer une perspective simulationnelle au profit des études du jeu permet de répondre à plusieurs de ces interrogations en focalisant l’attention de recherche autour des modalités du faire présentes dans la structure plutôt que sur les prescriptions d’usages qui tendent de plus en plus à s’effacer. Le motif de ce travail est de réfléchir aux apports de la simulation dans un corpus de six jeux de survie pour étudier l’hybridation faite entre le jeu et la simulation afin de comprendre comment une approche ludique augmente la créativité de la simulation qui, à son tour, multiplie la complexité praticable du jeu. Pour ce faire, nous construisons d’abord des bases théoriques pour aborder la question de la simulation. Ensuite, un exposé de la survie en jeu vidéo est offert au chapitre deux visant à bien saisir comment le sujet est modélisé dans le médium. Notre présentation méthodologique au chapitre trois explique comment nous avons recueilli nos données que nous analysons selon le paradigme interprétatif au chapitre quatre. L’objectif est de proposer deux nouveaux concepts pour les études du jeu : la Ludo-simulation en tant que posture de recherche et le Survivaliste vidéoludique comme posture de joueur. Ces deux concepts sont définis plus en détail au chapitre un et deux respectivement et discutés au chapitre quatre. / This master thesis aims to study the survival game genre through the prism of the simulation. Most of the computer games published today present atypical game structures with a tendency to liberate the player from any prescribed constraint for the benefit of a more expressive play. Minecraft (Mojang, 2010) is a prime example not explicitly offering “modalities of play” to the player, confronting most of the more traditional ludic forms, like game or sport, in which objectives are usually more convenient to determine. This tendency of games to develop complex agencies without necessarily prescribing an associated “must do” is the basis of several ongoing questions. Imposing a simulation perspective for the benefit of game studies makes possible to answer several of these questions by focusing research attention on the broader “modalities of doing” rather than on the prescriptions of uses which tend more and more to disappear. The objective of this work is to reflect on the contributions of simulation in a corpus of six survival games in order to study the crossing between game and simulation to understand how a game perspective increases the creativity of a simulation which, in turn, increases the practicable complexity of the game. In order to achieve this, we first develop the necessary theoretical foundation to tackle the question of simulation. Then, an exposition of survival in games is offered in chapter 2 in order to fully understand how the subject is modelled inside the medium. Our methodological presentation in chapter 3 aims to develop a descriptive introduction of the results and an interpretative analysis of the survival of the corpus in chapter 4. The objective of this work is to advance two new concepts for video game studies: Ludic-simulation as a research posture and the Videogame survivalist as a player posture. These two concepts are further defined in chapters 1 and 2 and questioned in chapter 4.

M. Tech. (Department of Visual Arts and Design, Faculty of Human Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / Fashion entrepreneurs with no formal fashion-related education or training are hereafter referred to by the acronym FEWFFET (fashion entrepreneurs without formal fashion-related education or training). Entrepreneurship provides a feasible means of employment in a country where national unemployment rates are alarmingly high. To succeed, entrepreneurs require business knowledge and skill to operate profitable and sustainable businesses. However, entrepreneurs who were previously disadvantaged often possess only low levels of education, limited qualifications and training. This applies to survivalist fashion entrepreneurs in the Sedibeng District Municipality (SDM) who produce various items of apparel and clothing. Over a third of these entrepreneurs are not formally educated in business management and may not possess the adequate knowledge to operate their fashion business successfully. The research aim was to investigate the uses and challenges pertaining to business skills amongst FEWFFET to determine their business skills training needs. The sample population included 105 black fashion entrepreneurs, operating micro, survivalist enterprises within peri-urban, resource-poor communities in the Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) of Sedibeng, Gauteng. A quantitative study using non-probability purposive sampling and snowball sampling was performed. Interviewer-administered questionnaires were conducted with respondents at fabric and haberdashery stores or within their home-business environments. The results indicated that respondents lacked business plan development skills and showed only moderate skills in finance and marketing. Respondents indicated business skills training needs for developing a business plan, conducting basic bookkeeping, determining correct product pricing, drafting quotations and invoices, developing a budget, conducting basic market research and advertising their products and services.