A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Building / Literature is replete with what constitutes barriers and challenges to the development of small, midsized and micro enterprise (SMME) contractors, often referred to as emerging contractors. The International Labour Organization (1987) proposed three solutions geared towards contractor development in developing countries. This research alludes to the importance of understanding the South African context wherein these proposed solutions are operational. The research begins with efforts made by the new democratic government, post 1994, to addressing the institutionalised inequalities - legacies of the previous regimes (colonization and apartheid) - via black economic empowerment, preferential procurement and construction industry development board (CIDB) legislations amongst others. The CIDB was instituted to promote amongst others the sustainable participation of emerging contractors in the construction industry; it is in this context that the national contractor development programme emerged. This research concerns itself with matters of knowledge or lack thereof as the underlying factor responsible for underdevelopment of emerging contractors. To do this, it looks at knowledge theories including its creation and transfer mechanism vis a vis organizational learning in an attempt to answer the question of nature and characteristics of learning in a specified contractor development programme (CDP).
This research is a cross-sectional study that lends itself to an interpretivist paradigm and inductive logic with qualitative methods (semi-structure interviews). This research does not cover mentorship and its theories. It also does not cover issues of improvements to knowledge transfer between emerging contractors and mentor-engineers.
The research concluded that much as knowledge transfer was observed within the contractor development programming, it occurred within a context and was content specific. However it is difficult to describe knowledge transfers in its entirety as it is multi-layered in nature and complexity of the make-up of emerging contractors and their interactions / GR2018
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/24608 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Kuju, Adetayo |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (vii, 73 leaves), application/pdf, application/pdf |
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