Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/37943
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Item Determinants of intrapreneurial performance within the banking industry in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Govender, Thanusha; Urban, B.The ability for large corporates to remain competitive and grow ahead of the market in an era that has been defined by globalisation, the fourth industrial revolution, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic has become increasingly difficult. Therefore, it is a critical imperative for organisations to develop a new capability that equips them to navigate the turbulent global macro-economic environment and complex business markets successfully. Globally, banks have experienced severe pressure to transform their business models from capital intense businesses into revenue diversification drivers through new fee-based services. Investors are leaning towards new generation banking models that serve customers holistically, intuitively, and better by employing “new age” technology solutions, as profitability levels within global banks have slipped below the cost of shareholder equity. Coupled with the reality on the ground pre-2020, COVID-19 has become awatershed transformation moment for banks. It has accelerated many long-term banking trends that have resulted in customer shifts in relation to their needs, behaviours and expectations and has subsequently impacted their recovery performance. As such, African banks need to pivot their focus towards growth and relevance by ensuring the establishment of a fundamentally different business model that provides integrated digital ecosystem solutions that go beyond traditional banking, and offer to ensure market competitiveness. Corporate entrepreneurship is a strategic capability that enables organisations to embed innovation as a core competency and simultaneously engage in explorative and exploitative activities, which are essential thrusts in the strategic renewal of a company. This research study enriched the domain of corporate entrepreneurship by deepening the understanding of the mechanisms that underpin the corporate entrepreneurial embedment process, within a dynamic complex organisational setting. This was through the development of a core embedment capability model of corporate entrepreneurship that predicts the value drivers of corporate entrepreneurial performance and explores the contextual corporate entrepreneurship nuances attributed to banking corporations domiciled in Africa. This study importantly furthered contextual setting theory development and shed light over the heterogeneity of corporate entrepreneurship, which arose due to an idiosyncratic corporate entrepreneurship embedment process. This process consists of institutional path dependencies that resulted from gradations in the macro, meso, and micro layers. The model and theories emanating from this study not only aimed to bridge the research gap by exploring the dynamic complexity of corporate entrepreneurship, but also assessed the knowledge transfer of market intelligence into corporate entrepreneurial performance, and the significance of network ties in developing countries as an influencer of corporate entrepreneurial activity. In this research study, the levels of corporate entrepreneurship within the financial services sector of companies domiciled in South Africa were analysed to determine the quantum of influence that organisational, individual, and environmental antecedent factors have as predictors of corporate entrepreneurial performance. This was a precursor to crafting an embedment capability model that would enable financial services organisations to embed a corporate entrepreneurial ecosystem systematically, and enable effective and agile corporate entrepreneurial transformation. The research purpose was achieved by employing a three-prong approach. First, a configurational method was applied to existing literature to consolidate prevailing theories and to integrate existing models and frameworks as a basis of the proposed theoretical model. Second, the theoretical model was empirically tested using partial least squares structured equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to validate the model and to establish causal relational influence among the three different sets of antecedent variables. This would determine their quantum of impact on corporate entrepreneurial performance. Finally, an optimal configuration was proposed as a premise to describe and predict corporate entrepreneurial performance as a function of system thinking. The empirical evidence from this study validated that the most significant transformational driver of corporate entrepreneurial activity within incumbents remained organisational antecedents and entrepreneurial corporate strategy as the bedrock of a corporate entrepreneurial embedment ecosystem. Its singular effect on corporate entrepreneurial activity was circa five times larger than any other predictor within the corporate entrepreneurial embedment ecosystem. This was flanked equally by employee enablement of the corporate entrepreneurial strategy and the execution of the corporate entrepreneurial strategy. Employee enablement consisted of two supporting predictors, namely, the decisions and behaviours of transformation leaders, and the entrepreneurial cognitive horsepower of employees to develop initiatives and formulate strategic plans that enable the delivery of the corporate entrepreneurial strategy. Strategy execution encompassed two underpinning predictors, namely, the implementation of an organic organisational structure and the deployment of novel resource recipes to build new capabilities and adjacent capabilities to a firm’s core offering. Considering the nuances in the African operating environment, both macro level antecedents and network ties were deemed non-significant direct value drivers of corporate entrepreneurial performance within African banks.Item Determinants of intrapreneurial performance within the banking industry in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Govender, Thanusha; B, UrbanThe ability for large corporates to remain competitive and grow ahead of the market in an era that has been defined by globalisation, the fourth industrial revolution, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic has become increasingly difficult. Therefore, it is a critical imperative for organisations to develop a new capability that equips them to navigate the turbulent global macro-economic environment and complex business markets successfully. Globally, banks have experienced severe pressure to transform their business models from capital intense businesses into revenue diversification drivers through new fee-based services. Investors are leaning towards new generation banking models that serve customers holistically, intuitively, and better by employing “new age” technology solutions, as profitability levels within global banks have slipped below the cost of shareholder equity. Coupled with the reality on the ground pre-2020, COVID-19 has become a watershed transformation moment for banks. It has accelerated many long-term banking trends that have resulted in customer shifts in relation to their needs, behaviours and expectations and has subsequently impacted their recovery performance. As such, African banks need to pivot their focus towards growth and relevance by ensuring the establishment of a fundamentally different business model that provides integrated digital ecosystem solutions that go beyond traditional banking, and offer to ensure market competitiveness. Corporate entrepreneurship is a strategic capability that enables organisations to embed innovation as a core competency and simultaneously engage in explorative and exploitative activities, which are essential thrusts in the strategic renewal of a companyItem Impact of firm-level characteristics and international marketing strategies on export performance of SMES in South Africa(2021) Siddiqui, AmmarInternationalization has caused numerous businesses across the world to extend their operations to foreign countries. Amongst the various forms of internationalization, such as direct investment, franchising and joint ventures, the primary and most common mode used by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is exporting. Exporting allows businesses to function in their home country and serve customers in other countries. Exporting relieves businesses from domestic competition, increases production, from which economies of scale, competitive prices and competitive advantages are gained. Despite these advantages, there are reports that limited SMEs in emerging economies like South Africa that are facing increasing competition from international forms entering their markets are exporting. Such reports raise questions as to the factor that becomes barriers for SMEs in South Africa to export. Previous studies have produced mixed findings, with some suggesting that exporting determinants are SMEs characteristics in terms of size and age, others suggesting managerial capabilities and characteristics and some contending that it is environmental factors and competence in dealing with expert market conditions and requirements. Considering the mixed findings from literature, there was a need for a consolidated study to identify country-specific factors that will propel SMEs in South Africa to not only export to perform optimally and superiorly. Even though the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capabilities view (DCV) theorists posit that firm performance is guaranteed when firms possess resources (tangible and intangible) and dynamic capabilities to adapt marketing strategies to changing market conditions, researchers have ignored the mediating role of the resultant marketing strategies in the relationships between performance drivers and export performance. Thus, this research had two main objectives: 1) examine the extent to which firm characteristics (firm size, age of the firm and employee education), managerial characteristics (international experience, education level, foreign language knowledge, risk taking ability, rigidness, proactive approach), environmental characteristics (psychic distance, cultural specificity), export market competencies (commitment, international expertise, market knowledge, innovation) impact both optimal and superior export performances); 2) test the mediating role of international marketing strategies in the relationships between the sets of drivers and export performance (subjectively) of South African SMEs. An integrated conceptual framework was developed delineating these relationships. iii To empirically test the conceptual framework, data was collected from 350 respondents of SMEs involved in export activities, located in the Gauteng and Western Cape of South Africa. Convenience sampling method was used in the research. The findings indicate that optimal export performance was significantly driven by an organization’s characteristics (i.e., size and education of employees), environmental characteristics of the firm (only psychic distance) and export market competence (internal market knowledge and experience, innovation and commitment. Superior export performance was significantly impacted by managerial characteristics (i.e., Foreign Language Expertise, International Experience, and Education level), Personality Factors (i.e., Risk Taking Ability, Rigidness, and Proactive Approach). The international marketing strategies and managerial characteristics had the greatest influence on the optimal export performance of the organisation, while the market competencies made the greatest impact on optimal export performance. The developed integrated model explained 87.6% of superior export performance, 78.5% of optimal export performance and 79.2% of international marketing strategy. With this high explanatory powers, this research theoretical contributes in the field of international marketing and strategic management by providing a holistic model with which to identify various factors and their facets helping and hindering SMEs to perform superiorly and optimally in not only an emerging market context but also in an African context. This study also theoretically contributes by confirming the RBV and DCV theories in an African market context. Practically, and for the SMEs that perform well, they can use insights from this study to identify what they are doing rightly. For the SMEs that perform poorly or are planning to export, this comprehensive findings will be a rich guide into internal factors (managerial and firm characteristics and export market competence) and environmental factors to focus on for effective strategy implementation and resultant superior and optimal export performances. Future research should test this model with a larger sample size and in other emerging and developing countries.