3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Corporate social responsibility in literacy: empowering change in South Africa(2009-02-17T10:32:03Z) Nzekwu, DeliaAbstract A critical equity and change enabler, literacy/education continues to prove very challenging to transform in South Africa. Having been a major apartheid resource through Bantu Education in entrenching South Africa‟s existing two worlds, business intervention in this crucial sector is the overriding interest of this research. How corporate social responsibility in education, assisted by public policy, reinforces inequality in the South African society, even as it attempts to alleviate poverty, is the thrust of the argument here around which many questions evolve. Some of the questions to which this thesis attempts to offer answers, therefore, are: What informs how business invests in education? How is public policy not an enabler of business investment in education? The objective is to determine the extent to which business investment in literacy/education can empower meaningful change in a market-driven South African society. The argument reiterated in this thesis is that Corporate Social Investment (CSI) in education has the potential to be a strong change driver. Unfortunately, its current positioning in the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BB-BEE) strategy is weak and its effect on change equally weak. The extent to which CSI in literacy can facilitate transformation in South Africa is highly dependent on the elimination of the many challenges beyond the scope of business endeavour. The challenges include the low weighting of CSI in the BEE agenda which is a hindrance to mind-set change about the relevance of education to South Africa‟s transformation. Employing the qualitative method, using elite interviewing, and relying on written records, this thesis starts off by finding the South African definition of the word Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) vis-à-vis global definitions. While Corporate Social Investment (CSI), it was discovered, is the preferred word in the private sector, findings here reveal that irrespective of what it is called in South Africa, CSR or CSI, both terms are fundamentally the same because, more in South Africa than anywhere else, the moral values that drive CSR or CSI are the same. That is, social justice, equity, and transformation. In order to determine its potency in the change process, a cursory assessment of CSI in the various sectors of education reinforces the place of the definition in that process. As an „investment‟, CSI is driven by market forces. Inherent in these forces are the inequalities that motivate capitalism and CSI is not insulated from those forces. Findings here emphasise that CSI, as yet another capitalist means of intervention in education, is thus severely challenged to be more than a tip of the ice-berg in the nation‟s change process. Very importantly, this thesis shows how paradoxically, public policy through the DTI Codes of Conduct for BB-BEE further disempowers CSI in education. As a “residual element” with an insignificant weighting on the BEE Scorecard, this research argues that legislation diminishes the importance of education as an empowerment driver. The inadequate creation of jobs further makes the benefit of education to transformation even less stimulating. It concludes that although CSR or CSI has enormous potential to drive change, the BEE legislation, the conceptualisation of CSR, and other micro issues evolving around poverty conspire to limit the extent to which CSI can empower change.Item A CONTRADICTORY CLASS LOCATION? AN EXPLORATION OF THE POSITION AND ROLES OF THE AFRICAN CORPORATE MIDDLE CLASS IN SOUTH AFRICAN WORKPLACES AND COMMUNITIES(2007-02-21T13:11:34Z) Modisha, GeoffreyThe corporate middle class, or managers, occupies a contradictory class location in capitalist relations of production. While they do not own the means of production, this class stratum is not exploited like the working class. This class position, however, is bound to be different for a black manager whose advancement in the workplace may be due to government attempts to economically empower black people to redress the injustices imposed by the racially dominated social structure of the past. Through a Weberian understanding of social stratification as based on class, social status and power, this research aims to unearth how members of the African corporate middle class understand their position and roles in South African workplaces and communities. It also goes deeper to scrutinise the impact of this structural position on their agency. It is shown that their contradictory class location is exacerbated by their race. African managers constantly negotiate their positions and roles in their workplaces and communities. Indeed, while their managerial position affords them spaces that they could not have occupied during the apartheid era, their racial character lessens their ability to manoeuvre within these spaces. This can be identified both in workplaces and communities. It is shown that their middle-class status cannot be consolidated because of their perceived lower social status and less power to influence decision making in their organisations. Furthermore, it is shown that, although not all of the interviewees moved to middle-class areas, there is an indication of alienation in previously white-only residential areas. This is further exacerbated by expectations from their former communities and members of their extended families. As a result of high levels of unemployment in African communities, members of this group are actively contributing to uplift members of their extended families.