3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item A computational model to predict the organisational performance of startups in South African incubators(2018) Chengalroyen, Jarryd JermaineThere have been several changes to the global economy in recent history. These are due to numerous factors such as globalisation, advancement in technology, accelerated innovations, and changing trends in demographics. These changes have resulted in the need to improve levels of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship plays a crucial role in the improvement of economic growth and development. It also plays a vital role in facilitating poverty reduction, creating employment and structural changes. Entrepreneurship is a tool which can be utilised to improve living standards and general well-being. Failure rates for new businesses, however, are extremely high. The success of new businesses is a necessary factor to grow the economy. Business failures, particularly for new businesses, are a waste of valuable resources which could be used to grow the economy. Business incubators have been created in order to solve this problem. Incubators add value by combining the entrepreneurial drive of a startup with a plethora of resources usually not available to these under resourced startups. There have been several models developed to predict the success of startups. For this research, rather than measuring only success or failure, organisation performance was measured. This study creates a computational model, using machine learning, which will be able to predict the organisational performance of start-ups within incubators, based on specific factors. The organisational performance has been defined as a composite of both turnover and number of staff employed. In order to create the model, a literature review was performed, in which 15 factors were determined as being significant in terms of predicting organisational performance. This was used to create a survey, which was distributed to incubators. There were 103 respondents to this survey. When doing statistical analysis on the results of the 103 respondents, only five factors were found to have statistical significance - age, number of founders, capital rating, professional advisors and education level. Statistically, the predictability of the initial statistical model proved to be low at 23,8% for turnover and 25,4% for number of staff employed. Using the random forest machine learning algorithm, the predictability was improved to 35,92% for turnover predictability and 40,78% for number of staff employed.Item Empirical study of the reverse-causality between organisation performance and employee behaviour in the agricultural manufacturing sector of Malawi(2018) Mvula, Ronnie TimpuzaMany organisations claim that Human Resources are their critical resource. However, what is most critical is not merely the human resources but how the Human Resources are managed. Human Resource Management is achieved through practices that the firm implements; these give the firm sustained competitive advantage. Many studies have found positive and significant relationship between HR management and firm performance. Previous studies have also studied reverse causality investigating whether organisational performance affects HR management policies and found significant positive relationship implying that it is good performing organisations that can afford adopting HRM practices. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether organisational performance motivates how employees behave at work in the reverse causality in the agricultural manufacturing firms in Malawi. To achieve this purpose a survey design was adopted using quantitative research strategy. Data were collected from a probability sample of 77 managers and 308 employees totalling 385 participants. Descriptive and inferential statistics using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) were used to analyse and test seven hypotheses. The proposed relationships were tested using a number of statistical methods. Adequate reliability was achieved on all measurement scales. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the content and structure of the measured constructs and were confirmed necessary. Reasonable fit was achieved for all the refined measurement models. A Lisrel based SEM was applied to examine whether the model fitted the data obtained from the sample and test the relationships between latent variables. Consistent with previous research; results of SEM revealed that Human Resource Management (HRM) practices are significant correlates of organisational performance. Further results showed positive relationships between business strategy and HRM practices; HRM practices and organisational performance. Significant negative relationship was found between employee attitudes and employee behaviour and employee behaviour and organisational performance.Item Exploring improvements of a continuous improvement capability assessment model at a petro-chemical company(2016) Tsatsire, JamesThe purpose of the research was to identify improvements which can be made to the Continuous Improvement (CI) capability assessment model applied at a petro-chemical company in order to improve capability assessment results. The study was conducted in Mpumalanga at a subsidiary of an international integrated energy and chemical company headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. To achieve the purpose of the research, the study was conducted in 5 stages namely: (1) developing a theoretical framework for Continuous Improvement (CI) capability assessment from the literature. This was achieved by reviewing the concept of CI and CI capability assessment, and it resulted in the identification of thirteen CI enablers and twenty-six enabler assessment areas which contribute to building an inclusive CI process. (2) Assessing the importance of CI enabler assessment areas identified through the theoretical framework, by means of statistical analysis of the data from a survey at the petro-chemical company. A survey was carried out to assist the researcher in identifying the key assessment areas from the twenty-six that were identified. Results indicated that all the twenty-six assessment areas are critical, (3) using the theoretical framework and results of the survey to identify gaps, which exist within the current Continuous Improvement assessment model, (4) determining what improvements need to be made to the current CI model based on the results of the gap analysis and (5) making recommendations on how to improve the CI model to the petro-chemical company. The results of the gap analysis indicated that, (1) six enablers were adequately assessed; (2) two enablers had missing assessment areas as part of the assessment and (3) five enablers were not assessed by the petro-chemical company model. Thus in order to improve the company’s assessment results it was recommended that the identified missing CI enablers and CI key assessment areas should be incorporated into the company model.Item The influence of human perceptions and characteristics when implementing electronic systems: a framework of critical success factors(2017) Mentz, ThinusFollowing the involvement in a project where a bank implemented an electronic inventory management system, a need was identified for further research into the human elements influencing the success of such projects. An initial high level study of some available literature supported the idea of human factors playing an important role. The subsequent research question formulated was: What are the major human factors that influence the implementation of electronic systems to replace their manual paper-based counterparts, if any? From literature the major human factors to be analysed were identified as: Leadership Communication Environment and culture Change readiness By employing a mixed method research approach and analysing the change readiness assessment surveys, post-implementation surveys, project team observations and site key performance indicators (KPIs) of 3 implemented sites, these were all confirmed as factors influencing such implementations. These conclusions were graphically depicted in a proposed framework showing the relationship between leadership as the driving factor to influence culture and change readiness through communication.Item The effect of technological innovation capabilities on corporate entrepreneurship and firm performance in the South African media and entertainment industry(2016) Onwu, Ekenedilichukwu GilbertIn order for developing countries like South Africa to not only compete in business at an international level, but to also establish a sustained competitive advantage in this increasingly integrated global business economy, a radical change in thinking is required. Technological innovation, knowledge and its application, which holistically explains an enterprise‟s technological innovation capability, are absolutely essential for modern firms looking to develop strategic and operational prowess on a global scale. Research in this field has largely highlighted the lack of technological innovation capabilities in developing regions around the world, and more recently the need for nations and firms to increasingly invest heavily in fostering technological innovation as a means for national economic growth. The same notion goes for the practice of corporate entrepreneurship, which has been internationally recognised as an integral aspect of firm survival, growth and relevance in all sectors and industries around the world. However, while several researchers agree that the relationship between technological innovation capabilities and corporate entrepreneurship is not clear, it is also vague as to the effect this relationship consequently has on organisational performance. Therefore, this research aims to delineate these relationships, specifically between technological innovation capabilities and corporate entrepreneurship, between technological innovation capabilities and organisational performance, between corporate entrepreneurship and organisational performance and through these constructs, shed some light on the investment capability of firms in these concepts in the context of the South African Media and Entertainment Industry. The research looks at the seven dimensions of technological innovation capabilities, the four dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship and a minor dimension on investment capability, all in relation to firm performance. This research employs both a regression and multi-correlation analysis to demonstrate the relationships between the two constructs and their individual relationships to firm performance.Item Business process improvements and innovations in support service processes and the effective measurement of their impact on the performance of manufacturing firms in South Africa(2017) Husvu, MunyaradziManufacturing companies have challenges implementing business process improvements and innovations (BPI) on support service processes effectively and find it difficult to measure the impact of such interventions on the overall performance of the organisation. Measurement of the impact of BPIs on overall performance of manufacturing companies is problematic due to the inadequacy of BPI metrics for support services. Furthermore, there are no universally accepted frameworks available for the measurement of the impact of improvements on support service processes on the performance of manufacturing companies. While there are frameworks available for performance measurement in general, they are not specific to measurement of the impact of BPIs in manufacturing support service processes. An initial exploratory study, based on an online survey of 50 companies that would typically conduct BPI or where known to the researcher to have conducted BPIs recently, was conducted to explore the nature of BPIs in manufacturing support service processes in South Africa. A second longer online survey was then conducted with 1000 respondents in manufacturing companies selected through expert sampling to further explore the nature and impact of BPIs in manufacturing support service processes considering selection of support service processes, the types and number of support service processes as well as BPI traditions and methodologies in use within manufacturing companies. In addition, four companies were selected for in-depth case studies in which ten projects were analysed by applying within case and cross case analysis The results of the surveys, the case studies and a revisit to the case companies were used to refine successive iterations of a theoretical framework initially developed from the literature. The framework provides a set of guidelines and actions for manufacturing companies to effectively conduct BPIs on manufacturing support service processes a basis from which the impact of improvements in manufacturing support service processes on manufacturing companies can be measured by providing the measurement areas to consider and a set of high level measures to use as high level indicators. Finally, the framework was checked for completeness using recommended criteria derived from the literature and was found to be complete and suitable as it met all the criteria for good measurement systems defined in the literature sources used in this study.Item Corporate entrepreneurial behaviour, organisational architecture and the entrepreneurial process(2017) Coetzee, RiaanThe prominence of international entrepreneurship in the global economy is of great importance and interest to researchers, entrepreneurs and governments alike. International business and accelerated internationalisation focus on multinational companies as well as entrepreneurial ventures for growth and innovative collaborations across borders in the global environment. The dominant logic for any corporate organisation today is to ensure that it facilitates and fosters an ecosystem that is conducive to innovation. The concept of generating opportunity through creativity and exploiting it with innovation, has proved to be extremely difficult, yet valuable. Innovation and control systems balance each other to ensure a pro-entrepreneurial organisational climate. Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) has received substantial attention in entrepreneurship research, which expands and develops a cumulative body of knowledge. The CE strategy is conceptualised by identifying key principles and components. This research is formulated to investigate the pro-entrepreneurial organisational architecture, as well as the entrepreneurial process and behaviour that individually and collectively encourage entrepreneurial orientation (EO). The relationships between the identified variables and moderators in a bank in the financial sector of South Africa are measured. Stevenson’s (1983) dimensions of entrepreneurial management, defined as a set of opportunity-based constructs, was measured by the EM measurement scale. Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) was assessed with the Miller/Covin- Slevin scale and linked to the entrepreneurial or innovative process of the company. Analysis of 178 samples (n=2229) indicated positive relationships between the variables, confirming theories in literature on the effects or predictions of the elements in the CE strategy on each other. The effect of success or failure in implementation indicated no moderating effect. Recommendations to address in future research are suggested.Item The current understanding of lean warehousing principles in a third party logistic provider in South Africa(2016) Swart, Alexander DaniëlA single case study of a major third party logistics provider (3PL) in South Africa was completed for this research. A total of four warehouses, including 43 workers partook in the study. The primary objective of this research was to determine how well employees within the warehousing industry understand Lean principles, and to illustrate the gap in Lean knowledge between the employment levels, i.e. Managers, Supervisors and Material Handlers. Group-administered questionnaires were used as the principle means of gathering data. All participants for each respective warehouse were present in a “classroom” format during completion of the questionnaires. The author was also present during all sessions to ensure consistency and to clarify any questions that participants had. The questionnaire tested each participant’s understanding with regards to seven key Lean principles in warehousing. These seven principles were identified from previous research on Lean within warehousing. The results gathered from the questionnaires were then validated using semi-structured follow-up interviews. It was found that a real gap in Lean knowledge exists between Managers and Material Handlers (shop-floor workers). Managers understand the key Lean principles within warehousing, as well as the importance thereof. While the employees actually working on the floor do not. The main reasons for this are due to a lack of suitable training and knowledge sharing. Based on the seven key Lean warehousing principles, the following were identified in the study as the most important ones to focus on: Continuous Improvement and Visual Management. These are believed to be basics in warehousing. However, employees still seem to struggle with the true understanding and significance thereof. It is imperative that the understanding of Lean principles and the involvement of management exist when striving to be successful with Lean. The gaps in Lean knowledge have been identified and laid out in this report. The reasons for each gap have also been investigated and discussed in detail. Finally, pertinent areas have been highlighted to assist with the development of Lean training material. This will ensure that the current gap of Lean understanding among warehousing employees is closed.