Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management (ETDs)

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    Management Style and Employee Engagement in Blue Collar Workers
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2021) Moodley, Sheila; Maier, Christoph
    A noteworthy and important part of South Africa is that “blue collar workers make up the backbone of the country’s economy” and as such, it is important to pay attention to the work related well-being of these workers in order to become a more productive nation with a more satisfied workforce (Brand-Labuschagne, Mostert, Rothmann and Rothmann, 2012:6). In the State of Labour Report (2016) it is recorded that 3 out of every 4 people in the South African working population are blue collar workers. Thompson (2001) found that the blue collar environment is dominated by black South Africans and argued that it is worthwhile to attempt to identify the perceptions and behaviours of black South Africans in the blue collar environment to address the challenges facing South Africa. In the field of employee engagement it has been found that engaged employees “show higher job and organisational performance, positive job attitudes, higher psychological well-being and proactive job behavior” (Makikangas, Schaufelli, Tolvanen and Feldt, 2013: 136). It has further been established that employee engagement is directly linked to a number of positive organisational outcomes that include improved productivity, increased job satisfaction, higher levels of motivation, employee commitment, reduced turnover intention, increased customer satisfaction, better returns on assets, profits and shareholder value (Bakker, Demerouti and Schaufeli, 2003; Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter and Taris, 2008; Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, 2002; Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004; Lee and Mohammed, 2006; Brand- Labuschagne, Mostert, Rothmann and Rothmann, 2012). The State of Employee Engagement Report (2019), found that leaders and immediate supervisors make the biggest difference in employee engagement and the research of Kahn (1990) points to engaging the mind, body and soul of the person in the performance of their work as a way of improving employee performance
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    Investigating alternative social funding instruments for SMMEs in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2020) Xaba, Prudence; Sibanda, Tonderai
    Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) are key drivers of economy, innovation, job creation and the biggest contributor of the GDP. In 2015 there were 2 251 821 SMMEs, with only 667 433 in the formal sector and registered, the rest operating in the informal sector. South Africa today is faced high rates of poverty, unemployment and poor education levels. The current legislative framework has been unable to transform the skewed discrimination in the economic sector. Several government strategies and interventions have not yielded any positive results. The study explored the conversion of stokvels into an alternative social funding instrument for SMMEs. Stokvel is a centralised collective savings scheme, where monthly periodic contribution are paid. Stokvels are referred to as Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROCSAs), with a membership of between 5-30 members. The study employed qualitative multi method approach, using focus groups observations, individual interviews and document analysis to collect data. Semi structured questionnaires were used for the five stokvels focus groups and three individual interviews with government executives. Data analysis was conducted using the three theories; phenomenology, ethnography and interactionism. The findings show that stokvel members are willing to convert into formal investment instruments, to manage risks and having access to better control management systems. They also stated that they would like to maintain their independence, unique identity and control of their savings. It also found that stokvels need financial training in order to make informed decisions on the available platforms. It was also found that all this is impossible without government’s intervention in transforming the sector and introduce flexible legislation accommodating stokvels. It is also stated that retail banks could hinder the introduction of progressive and flexible legislation regulatory framework as they recognise that stokvels could be disruptors in the financial sector.
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    The deployment of platform businesses in the township economy: a focus on spaza shops in Soweto
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Deokaran, Ruwaan
    The purpose of this study was to understand how the township economy is leveraging off platform businesses to make them more profitable and deliver on customer needs more easily and conveniently. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with 10 entrepreneurs operating spaza shops in Soweto (a township in South Africa) were conducted. Findings showed that the use of platform technologies has put SA spaza shop owners in a better position to access financial support. The study also found that spaza owners were now better equipped to track their inventory and thus prevent any losses, thus experiencing greater overall profitability. Given that most South African spaza shop entrepreneurs operate on limited budgets and face stiff competition from foreign owned spaza shops, the greatest value of this research is that it not only confirms the adequacy of platform technologies in the spaza shop sector, but it also shows that adoption of platform technologies results in competitive advantage and strategic opportunities
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    Social reproduction, labour markets, and economic change in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Francis, David Campbell; Valodia, Imraan
    The South African rural economy, and its relationship to the industrial economic heartlands, has been the focus of study for many decades. In the 1970s, Harold Wolpe provided an incisive materialist analysis of apartheid. He argued that the rural economy served as a site of the reproduction of labour for capitalism in urban South Africa, thus ensuring a supply of cheap labour. His cheap labour thesis has formed the backbone of political economy analysis in South Africa ever since. But Wolpe, and other such as Mike Morris, who studied the relationship between the rural economy and the development of capitalism in South Africa, were largely unconcerned with the highly gendered nature of cheap labour, despite the fact that women were actively excluded from mining and the industrial economy by law, and played a critical role in the reproduction of life and labour in the Bantustans. Following the end of apartheid, the legal barriers preventing women from working in the main economy were dismantled, and women’s labour force participation rose rapidly. But this legal equality has not translated into substantive equality: women in rural areas continue to be significantly worse off economically than men. Unemployment rates are significantly higher for women, and they earn lower wages than men, even where they do the same work. Women continue to undertake far more unpaid work than men, and girl and women-headed households are more likely to live in poverty. Furthermore, despite well-developed literature on South Africa’s political economy, we know little about the productive and reproductive lives of rural women in contemporary South Africa. This thesis critically re-examines Wolpe for the 21st century by providing a materialist, gendered analysis of the economy of Agincourt, Mpumalanga, an area which remains on South Africa’s geographic and economic periphery. It shows how households in this part of rural South Africa are responding to the ways in which capitalism in South Africa has changed in the post-apartheid period. This thesis illuminates the important links between labour force participation, paid work, unpaid work, and livelihood strategies among households in the Agincourt area. It argues that focusing on the role of South Africa’s rural areas as sites of the reproduction of labour, as per the cheap labour thesis, ignores the highly gendered nature of social reproduction and its contribution to the reproduction of both labour and life. This thesis further contends that the role of South Africa’s rural areas cannot be investigated or theorised without a specifically gendered approach which includes women’s work in the analysis. It adds to our knowledge about an area of South Africa which is important in its own right. And Agincourt is also emblematic of the conceptual and methodological challenges of studying rural areas and their relationship with the economic 8 heartlands of urban South Africa in a way that does not marginalise the economic lives of women. It further contributes methodologically and epistemologically to studying the intersection of paid and unpaid work. It draws on a mixed-methods approach – a household survey of 600 households and 24 in-depth interviews – to investigate women’s economic lives in this marginalised place, and to re-examine the relationship between South Africa’s economic core and its periphery from an explicitly gendered perspectiv
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    Modelling the dependence structures among international stock markets using copulas: Evidence from South Africa and advanced economies
    (niversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Foresto, Anis; Farell, Gregory
    Growth in financial linkages has led to similar movements between financial markets. This increase in financial market interdependence or comovement raises questions about the transmission of risk through conventional channels (balance sheet, trade dependence and portfolio flows), particularly the methods policymakers and institutional investors use to measure the strength and intensity of these transmission channels. This study will add to the literature by empirically assessing the dependence structure between South Africa and Advanced Economies (AE) stock prices, to determine if diversification is still possible. These are represented by the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE TOP 40 index for South Africa, the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) for the United States, Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 (FTSE 100) for the UK, and the Deutscher Aktienindex for Germany. This study will model the dependence structure using both static and time-varying copula methods. The time-varying copula model specification is adapted from the Generalized Autoregressive Score (GAS) model of Creal et al (2013). This study finds little evidence to support the benefit of diversification between South Africa’s stock market and advanced economies. The results are consistent with the stylised facts in the literature: asset returns are asymmetric and leptokurtic and the dependence between markets intensifies during crisis periods. The findings of this study are consistent with prior literature on African markets (Mensah and Alagidede, 2017, Bello et al, 2022)