3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Effects of R&D internationalisation on R&D investment of firms in South Africa(2016) Mashamba, Mulima GodfreyUsing a multiple case study approach of three R&D performing firms in South Africa, this research explored whether current R&D internationalisation trends are having a positive or negative effect on South Africa’s investments in research and development (R&D). The research found that, contrary to theoretical proposition, the three firms have not relocated core parts or their entire R&D to technologically advanced countries abroad as a result of their increased international exposure. Instead, they have broadened their scope of R&D to integrate foreign-based knowledge inputs. The research also found that increased internationalisation causes firms to alter their approaches to R&D exploitation through incremental improvements on- and/or finding new applications ofexisting technologies and creating new markets for them. Three motives influenced the firms, namely to access new knowledge not available locally, to access human capital and to exploit existing capabilities in new markets. Where firms reduced their local R&D investment, such activities were not being relocated to abroad. Increased competition fostered firms’ R&D efficiency. Firms reviewed their internal structures to maximise intellectual property (IP) value; they adopted stricter methods for evaluating new R&D requirements; and they afforded higher priority to R&D with better potential for success. Most of this is meant to exploit existing knowledge. The findings are applicable to Emerging Economy Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs) that already have well-established R&D capability at home and experience operating in the international R&D environment.Item How the print media globalises South Africa from outside and within: a neo-Gramscian perspective(2015-08-25) Tshabalala, ThandekileDue to the need to gain global political legitimacy after the 1994 democratic dispensation, the South African government embarked on a neoliberal political trajectory. This became evident because of the ways in which the South African state was integrated back into the international economy through adopting neoliberal economic policies. This included a free-market economy with no state intervention, trade liberalisation through the lowering of barriers for foreign investment, and liberalisation of the media complex which was tightly controlled by the state. These were prescribed as an effective way of consolidating the new fragile democratic South Africa thereby seeing the new government accepting a neoliberal policy path. This was part of the embrace of the new won democracy and relationship with the international community after many years of economic sanctioning, political isolation and pariah status. The aim of this study is to examine the ways in which South African print media reproduce the dominance of neo-liberal discourses by globalising South Africa from outside and within. In addition, this study specifically seeks to look at how South Africa’s print media legitimises and authorises macro-economic policy. Thus, entrenching the ideas of a neo-liberal stance as well as analysing the perceptions of the print media’s class orientation in relation to the ruling historic bloc. The historic bloc is all levels of society [political, social, civil] coming together to form a dominant social class. This study will make use of interviews transcripts from 7 audio recorded and one email interview as well as the Business Day and Mail & Guardian’s reports on the Budget Speech from 2011-2014. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Country Reports on South Africa were also used as data, and also analysed during the same period. These will be used to analyse how these newspapers report on macro-economic issues through the abovementioned case studies. This study employed the mixed research method which uses quantitative and qualitative tools to analyse the data which is a convergent design also known as triangulation. The quantitative tool used was content analysis for its numerical value and the qualitative tool used was the thematic analysis which is an inductive reading of the reports and transcripts. These tools exposed interesting results which echoed historical trends of ownership, values and norms illustrating an important but narrow function of the selected newspapers.Item Foreign direct investment and worker rights : a case study of a private security multinational in Mozambique.(2009-03-06T09:08:07Z) Carvalho, Daniela Sampaio deThis article intends to contribute with the reflection upon the theories that link FDI with social and economical development. For this purpose, the meanings of the expression “human and economical development” will be briefly reviewed, and later it will be approached along the theories on the relation of FDI with development. The theories are used as a support in order to reach this article’s goal of pointing out the FDI impacts on labour conditions on the private security multinational G4S in Mozambique, thus examining the impacts of this sort of FDI towards the country’s human development.