Issue #1 (cont.) (Volume 14 2016)

In South Africa, the problem of service delivery cuts across all municipalities as manifested by citizen protests across the country on almost daily basis. To mitigate the costs associated with the protests, the South African government has placed emphasis on the role played by human resources management through instituting legislative frameworks, such as the the White Paper on Human Resource Management in the Public Service (1997). Despite this effort, the human resource management practices of municipalities continue to be criticized, by both municipal internal staff and citizenry. Service delivery in the South African context is regarded as one of the cornerstone indicators of how the government affords its citizens access to quality life as enshrined in its constitution. This paper is one of the studies based on the South African context attempting to explain the problem of service delivery by looking at perceived fairness in human resource management (HRM) practices by employees of municipalities and how such perceptions affect their motivation to work. Using the tenets of the organizational justice theory, the authors hypothesize that perceived HRM practices of municipalities can be predictors of employee motivation. Quantitative data collected from employees of nine randomly selected municipalities in the Free State Province are used to create indices for the different HRM practices as well as employee motivation. Significant correlation tests are performed. Results show a positive correlation between perceived fairness in the HRM practices of municipalities and employees’ motivation at .05 and .01 levels of significance. This means that fair HRM practices of municipalities promote employee motivation

Worldwide, the employment of people with disabilities has been challenged by the slow development of ‘workplace specific’ disability employment policies. The focus has been on formulating legislation to overcome barriers and the implementation of national disability policies without ensuring that workplaces formulate such policies. While laws regarding disability have been on the statute books for two decades in South Africa, little is known about how effective they have been and their impact in the workplace. This article examines whether South African government departments have developed or reviewed employment policies for the benefit of people with disabilities, and determines whether policy makers were aware of the existence of the Disability Code (Republic of South Africa, 2002) and the Technical Assistance Manual (Republic of South Africa, 2005) when the policies were developed or reviewed. Human Resource Managers from 16 government departments in KwaZulu-Natal Province were interviewed. It was found that although HR policies were in place and some were being developed, very little has been done in terms of reviewing and/or developing disability employment policies. Furthermore, the existing prescripts were not extensively used as a resource during the development of disability-related employment policies. This has negatively affected the employment of people with disabilities in the public service. It is hoped that the results will assist management, HR practitioners as policy makers, and line managers to develop disability employment policies in order to attract and retain people with disabilities. The research also contributes to the existing body of literature on disability

The importance of integrated supply chain management cannot be overemphasized in any business due to the emergence of inter and intra firm trade, literature has confirmed that the success of any business in all parts of the world depends on the effectiveness of their supply chain management. The focus of this paper is to present an exploratory study on the use of integrated supply chain management model for promoting competitiveness in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturing industry in Nigeria and explore critical factors affecting implementation and use. Primary data are collected from 80 selected respondents in FMCG manufacturing industry based in Lagos Nigeria. Quantitative method of data collection is used. SPSS 22.0 is used to analyze data. Findings of the research indicate the significance of .000* with .879* Cronbach’s Alpha reliability. It also reveales that most of the tested variables are very significant. The study will benefit FMCG manufacturing industry in Nigeria and affiliated stakeholders as well as international communities by providing them with recent model. The findings are limited by the study’s exploratory, quantitative nature and small sample, therefore, generalization of the results should be done with care and further research, with a large sample encouraged

One of most critical issues facing organizations today is how to retain employees they want to keep. The study examines the relationship dynamics between employees’ psychological career resources (measured by the Psychological Career Resources Inventory) and their organizational commitment foci (measured by the Organization-Related Commitment Scale). A quantitative survey is conducted involving a non-probability purposive sample of predominantly black females employed at managerial and staff levels (N = 318) in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. The findings provide valuable indicators for the design of career development practices aimed at retaining valuable staff

The main objective of this research study is to investigate the extent to which knowledge management is used within the mining industry.
Knowledge management includes the identification and examination of available and required knowledge and the subsequent planning and control of actions to develop knowledge assets to accomplish organizational objectives.
A structured questionnaire is used for the study. A total of 300 mines were randomly selected from a research population of mining organizations in South Africa, Africa and globally. The respondents were all part of senior management. A response rate of 64% was achieved.
A significant number of respondents indicates that there is no transfer of knowledge about the best practices within their organizations. Some of the participants indicate that their organizations do not have the required technical infrastructure to enable knowledge sharing whilst some agree that the culture in their organizations is not conducive to the sharing of knowledge.
A statistically and practically significant positive relationship with a large effect is found between the construct of knowledge management and perceived business performance. The mining organizations in Africa are ranked the lowest in terms of applications of knowledge management principles

Failure to budget has been identified as one of the main causes of failure of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This study seeks to determine the extent to which SMEs in the Cape Metropolis use budgets. Specifically, the study aims to determine the types of budgets used, methods of budgeting employed, purpose for which budgets are used, perceived effectiveness of budgets used and factors that may inhibit SMEs from using budgets.
Data were collected using a questionnaire and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of this study revealed that most of the SMEs sampled used budgets. The three most frequently used budgets were sales budgets, purchases budgets and cash budgets, while the most frequently used budgeting method was fixed budgeting. The findings also revealed that budgets were mostly used for monitoring, measuring business performance, future planning and control purposes. The findings further revealed that budgets were perceived to be effective but the lack of top management support and qualified personnel were the main factors that inhibit SMEs from using budgets.
This study not only fills the gap in the literature on the use of budgets, but also provides invaluable insights on their use by SMEs. These insights could inform future endeavours of the Government when developing interventions meant to avert the high failure rates of these entities. The findings may also assist SMEs to gauge and review their own use of budgets with a view to optimising the benefits derived from these tools, as well as to overcome the factors that could inhibit them from using the budgets in the first place

In order to compete, retain and attract postgraduate students, and overcome the lack of postgraduate throughput, universities of technology need to be more customer orientated. Therefore, to gain competitive advantage, university management needs to identify and assess the service quality gaps in research support structures and analyze the impact they have on students and staff within the university. The purpose of the study is to investigate the perceptions of staff and postgraduate students with regard to research structures and service quality support by relevant offices with specific reference to Durban University of Technology. Data were collected from academic staff and students across six faculties at the Durban University of Technology. The sample consisted of 278 academic staff and 260 postgraduate students, using a simple random sampling. A mixed method approach of qualitative and quantitative techniques was used, with a closed and open-ended questionnaire developed, by adapting the SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985), to evaluate and assess the quality dimensions (gap) for reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The findings of the study indicated that staff and students were dissatisfied with the research support structures across six faculties. Further research should aim at assessing performance management of research support structures and service within the relevant research offices

Township tourism in South Africa has grown in popularity since 1994 and is considered by some researchers to be an appropriate mechanism for stimulating local economic development. Opportunities for the development of black-owned enterprises in South Africa began for the first time when the country integrated into the global tourism economy after many years of international sanctions. The growth of township tourism thus can provide the context for potential economic opportunities for local entrepreneurs to enter the business, an activity that traditionally has been the domain of established white South African entrepreneurs. The main objective of the study is to present findings on the challenges that face a certain group of small tourism enterprises in townships with more attention being specifically paid to Umlazi as the second biggest township in the Southern hemisphere. The main reason for the choice of the study is due to the fact that there is only a limited literature that explores the conditions of small-scale and informal tourism entrepreneurs operating in South Africa’s black townships. The focus falls upon the challenges of developing small tourism entrepreneurs for black owners in the township, especially because South African tourism industry is highly concentrated and dominated by small elite group of large, mostly locally owned, tourism organizations which drive the tourism economy that unfortunately excludes and sidelines that of the townships

The inability of workers to achieve balance between work and family responsibilities has led to heightened incidence of illnesses associated with stress. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the role of Sense of Coherence (SOC) on the achievement of work life balance by focusing on individual managers at a municipality in the South African public service. These individual managers often struggle with work-life balance (WLB) challenges like HIV/AIDS, relational tension, single parenthood, child and elder care, alcohol and substance abuse, debt and financial issues, absence of job autonomy, function vagueness/role conflict and job stress. A sequential transformative mixed methods research design is adopted. Data were collected using self-report questionnaire administered to 364 individual managers; additional eleven members of top management were interviewed. Quantitative data gathered are analyzed using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22 to test the reliability and validity of the instrument as well as the bivariate association between the variables. NVIVO is used in organizing qualitative data for ease of content analysis. The findings indicate that SOC should be considered when designing strategies to address employee work-life needs. Furthermore, it confirmed that the presence of strong SOC does not lead to achievement of WLB

Transport forms the heartbeat of the economy, not only in South Africa but also globally. Over time the South African government has invested a great deal of resources in transport projects such as taxi recapitalization rail technology as well as bus rapid transit (BRT). The BRT project has been a point of discussion in terms of the value which it can bring to key stakeholders, particularly to commuters and the country’s economy at large. BRT is basically an urban public bus transport strategy which seeks to alleviate congestion, mostly in the Metropolitan areas. In this paper the significance of the BRT strategy is highlighted as this may guide future public transport project investment. As a strategic move, the decision for government to roll out BRT is evaluated in terms of blue ocean strategy (BOS) principles and red ocean strategy (ROS) elements. BOS strategy suggests that an organization operates in its own created market space where competition is rendered irrelevant, whereas with ROS organization relies on having a competitive edge in order to outsmart its rivals. The preliminary findings suggest that there are some elements of both BOS principles and ROS that are relevant to BRT projects. BRT is seen as a useful public transport investment particularly for countries with developing economies elements such as South Africa. However, stakeholder buy-in and cooperation should be promoted to preserve the strategic and social gains brought about by BRT and other integrated public transport projects

The issues of retail and office center structure formation are developed and presented in the existent literature. This article argues that in each case, these issues need to be refined depending on the location, the number of neighborhood and the surrounding streets’ residents, the presence of other shops and services within walking distance, etc. The purpose of this article is to confirm the abovementioned specificity during the marketing research, in order to evaluate the significance of the factors forming the structure of retail and office center for the population and future tenants. A survey of 200 residents and 100 business owners and managers was conducted. The study’s results allow the formulation of a framework of retail and office center, determining the number of tenants, taking into account their preferences, and getting a list of interested tenants. It also shows the way to facilitate optimization of the layout of the center with regards to the requirements of the anchor tenants, high-footfall shops and customers; to develop the best routes to distribute customers across the floors and center’s zones

The article focuses on the problems of statistical measurement of labor productivity in construction, as recent years saw the most significant changes in the methodology of calculating construction products. The study examined the factors affecting the dynamics of labor productivity in construction, calculated by the volume of work at estimate piece that is at the index known as “average output per worker” in the practice of planning and statistics. Labor productivity is a complex qualitative index, which is influenced by numerous factors. Therefore, the most effective method for studying the dynamics of labor productivity is the use of the index method. The index method seems to be widely used in statistical research of labor productivity in construction