Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management (ETDs)
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Item Towards digital transformation of learning and development business processes and systems in the eThekwini municipality(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Ngubane, Millicent Puleng; Chikane, RekgotsofetseThe study focuses on the digital transformation and remodelling of business processes and systems in the municipality’s employee learning and development unit, given the advancement and evolution of technologies that have contributed to redefining the functioning, style and manner of work. The learning and development unit of eThekwini Municipality was selected as the case study to assess how digital transformation can be carried out by the learning and development unit. Further, to assess how employees perceive and respond to a call to transition to digital platforms. The study was devoted to exploring how employees interpret digital transformation in the municipality’s workforce learning and development context. It extends to establishing employees' perceptions of the state of preparedness and factors influencing the operationalisation of digital transformation. Further to assess the framework and digital initiatives already implemented and resources and capabilities secured and needed to support the transformation of learning and development processes. The results of the study discovered that the municipality’s employees understood digital transformation and its impact on business process remodelling for learning and development. Employees were precise about what needed to change and provided the reasons for learning and development to contemplate transformation. The key strategic change is the necessity for a swift transition towards the use of digital technologies to help the municipality achieve its goal of being a smart and learning city. For instance, being a smart city requires the municipality to advance in technology use and increase value proposition resulting in customer satisfaction. The learning and development being mandated and entrusted with employee development it is critical that it leads transformation and ensures employee IT capabilities needed in the digital era. The study made the realisation that the L&D unit is still lagging attributed to a lack of leadership to provide direction, no blueprint to guide the transformation process, insufficient resources and capabilities, increased engagement required with employees, customers, and partners as well as assistance to management change.Item Examining Knowledge Management Practices of Monitoring and Evaluation Professionals in the Public Secto(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Moleleki , Limpho; Pophiwa, NedsonThe intersection of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and Knowledge Management (KM) has garnered significant attention in recent years, yet the nuanced understanding of how KM complements M&E, particularly within the public sector, remains limited. The study aims to investigate how public sector M&E professionals understand and employ KM practices, identifies challenges and benefits associated with KM in M&E, and assess the implementation of M&E policies and legislation, particularly concerning KM integration. Utilising a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews with M&E professionals complemented by documentary analysis of relevant literature and policies were conducted. Thematic analysis was applied to analyse the data. Findings revealed there is some level of awareness and implementation of KM practices but a need for further development and integration of KM into M&E practices is needed. Overcoming organisational barriers and promoting a collaborative culture are essential for effective KM integration in M&E within the public sector, for improving decision- making and performance. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between KM and M&E in the public sector context revealing the need for targeted interventions and policy reforms to enhance KM integration and utilisation in M&E practices for improved use.Item Student agency in volunteer programmes at Rhodes university(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mdluli, SiphiwayinkosiStudent volunteer work plays a vital role in addressing local community issues such as high poverty rates, high illiteracy and high unemployment rates. Through students, tertiary institutions are able to fulfil their social responsibility. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of agency on student participation in volunteer work at Rhodes University, in Makhanda. To effectively respond to this inquiry, the research focused on the Nine Tenths Mentoring programme. Following a qualitative approach comprising a mix of an interpretivist and case study paradigms, the findings revealed that the umbrella term ‘student agency’ comprised mainly of moral agency, identity agency, pragmatic agency, and existential agency. These forms of agency largely contributed to a positive volunteer experience that contributed significantly to healthy relationships among community members and student volunteers, as well as advancing the student volunteers as committed agents of social change. This research highlighted the importance of involving tertiary students in community volunteer work.Item Anti-Corruption and Anti-Fraud Policies in South African Universities(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Madungandaba, Freda; Sarakinsky , Ivor; Hobden, ChristineThe escalation of corruption and fraud within South Africa, as accentuated by revelations from the Zondo commission, point out a pervasive governance deficit extending beyond the public sector into the private domain. Media reports have drawn attention to concerns regarding corruption and fraud within South African universities, prompting an inquiry into the mechanisms available within higher education for managing such malpractices. Thus, this study seeks to investigate the anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies and initiatives implemented by South African universities. Employing a qualitative research methodology, the study assessed policies from 10 South African public universities and conducted interviews with university practitioners. The findings revealed that Higher Education Institutions have well-established fraud prevention processes in place, albeit with certain instances exceeding customary norms. However, the role of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in supporting universities with policy frameworks for combating corruption remained ambiguous. Additionally, communication regarding the newly proposed National Anti-Corruption Strategy to universities was found to be lacking.Item Understanding Indigenous Philanthropy in Ghana from an Akan Perspective(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Afadzinu, Nana Asantewa; Everatt , David; Moyo, BhekinkosiThis thesis aims to gain in-depth understanding of indigenous philanthropy in Ghana, with a particular focus on the Akan and contributes to filling the existing knowledge gap of a dearth of information on indigenous philanthropy in Ghana. It examines the conceptualisation of Akan philanthropy, explores the meaning, nature and practice of Akan philanthropy and identifies potential changes that may have occurred over time as well as the underlying reasons behind such shifts. Indigenous methodologies and methods such as ethnophilosophy and sagacity, as well as a decolonial approach informs the research design. The findings suggest that Akan philanthropy is ‘adɔyɛ’ - the reciprocal and morally obligatory demonstration of love by every member of a community (individually and collectively) to other members of the community. Community here includes the members' relations (physical and spiritual) . This demonstration of love is through that members' way of life, be-ing and consequent actions and is for the ultimate benefit of the community. Akan philanthropy is anchored in Akan humanism values. It is a life- long cyclical practice that includes all irrespective of wealth and is midwifed by traditional institutions like family, the community and traditional leadership. Although, affected by colonialism, Akan philanthropy has adapted to the existing era and is still a key source of community sustenance and wellbeing. The hegemony of Western philanthropy has relegated it to the background hence the need to decolonise philanthropy. This is done through conceptualising philanthropy through indigenous knowledge systems like that of the Akan and foregrounding indigenous philanthropy in Africa.Item The Role of Psychology in Legal Education: Incorporating Cognitive Science into Legal Pedagogy(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Starosta, Paulina Dagna; du Plessis, RiettePrevailing criticisms of legal education suggest that students enter clinical programmes ill equipped to solve problems and that they leave law school without learning the lawyering competencies of effective legal practitioners. This thesis is broadly premised on the idea that exposing law students to cognitive science and basic psychology would better equip them to achieve life-long learning and to acquire enduring practical lawyering skills. Psychology – the science of how people think and behave – has a great deal to teach us about the core competencies of lawyering. People who understand how others think, feel and behave, make better lawyers, decision makers and problem-solvers. Psychologists have conducted extensive research into psychological phenomena which are integral to effective lawyering. This research can be effectively incorporated into legal pedagogy, including how we teach law students to practice law. The proposal underpinning this research is the need for an undergraduate course on how psychology operates within the law, specifically designed to make students aware of how cognitive science and psychological phenomena affect and impact on the learning and practice of law. Developmental discourse regarding legal curricula entrenches the notion that law schools teach students how to think like lawyers but not how to be lawyers. The proposed response to this criticism is that metacognition – the awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes – and the concomitant development of higher order thinking skills is key to the development of effective legal training, but this is presently absent in South African legal curricula. This thesis posits that experiential learning should begin before a student ever steps foot into a Law Clinic or a courtroom and that the reason why students leave law school unable to truly think like lawyers is because the notion is only truly introduced to them in their final year of law school, usually in the form of a clinical or experiential learning programme. The work contained herein is premised on the idea that legal educators ought to draw on the gains made by cognitive psychologists in understanding what happens when people learn and what neuroscience has to say about how people think and to introduce this to students at a relatively early point in their legal studies. The hypothesis underpinning this research is thus, that harnessing the science of psychology and allowing it to permeate legal pedagogy would be beneficial because the processes involved in both learning and lawyering are intricately linked to innate psychological processes and responses. Thus, the proposal is for an introductory course in basic legal psychology oriented at producing graduates who can think critically and solve problems pragmatically – graduates who are able to not only think like lawyers but also vi to act like lawyers. The research is significant as it explores the viability of such a course within the LLB curriculum at the University of the Witwatersrand and considers what such a course would look like in the South African context. An undergraduate course on psychology within the law would give students a sense of understanding themselves before they try to make sense of the actions and motivations of others (like clients, judges and opponents) when they enter their clinical programme. It is my contention that currently, legal education fails to adequately bridge the gap between law and practice because students are never taught to factor in the feelings, fears, concerns and motivations of themselves or others. A course, which exposes students to their own psychological motivations, as well as those of other players in the litigation arena, would give students the context of how to approach the acquisition of skills and the competencies required to practice law in a more pragmatic manner. Chapter 1 introduces the basic premise behind the research and orients the research focus. Chapter 2 explores both the theoretical and practical criticisms of traditional legal education locally and internationally. This chapter explores the need for the development of the South African LLB degree in the context of recommendations made by the Council for Higher Education (CHE). The chapter proposes the use of cognitive learning theory to maximise law school learning by drawing on research related to metacognition and the influence of learning styles. Chapter 3 introduces the importance of psychology within the law and orients the role of psychology in legal practice in the context of skills acquisition in undergraduate study. The chapter proceeds to isolate five indispensable legal skills required of law graduates to practice law and gives insight on how psychology impacts on the acquisition and use of those skills. This chapter advocates for the need for a stand-alone course on the study of basic psychology (including metacognitive learning) to improve lawyering skills. Chapter 4 focuses on the first part of course design, namely, the values, goals and outcomes of the proposed course on psychology within the law. This chapter engages with the values which underpin the course design process, the need to focus on law as being grounded in the humanities as opposed to being viewed as a science and the ultimate exorcism of the theory- practice divide. A proposal is made for the use of the unified learning model (ULM) in the development of the proposed course and lessons from experiential learning are used to set goals and outcomes for the syllabus. Lastly, the chapter focuses on the proposed placement of the intended course within the broader LLB curriculum. Chapter 5 focuses on the course methodology, course content and assessment of the proposed course. The chapter describes numerous teaching methodologies and their implications on the choice of course design model. Lessons on proposed course content from similar courses offered in the United States of vii America (USA) and Australia are used to construct a proposed syllabus, course outline and assessment plan for the course. Essentially, this chapter constructs a hypothetical pilot course for adaptation within the undergraduate LLB curriculum based on the goals, outcomes and placement referred to in chapter 4. Chapter 6 contains concluding remarks, reflective findings and proposals for the extension of this research.Item The effect of parental education on child and adult health in Zambia: A regression discontinuity analysis(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Daka, Lincoln; Booysen, FrederikThis thesis expands upon and enhances existing research in the field of health economics. The thesis consists of three separate yet interrelated chapters that examine the effect of education on key demographic variables: child health, fertility and HIV/AIDS in Zambia, three key factors affecting the progress of development in Africa. The endogeneity problem is present in all of the three empirical papers examined. To circumvent this endogeneity problem and establish a credible causal effect, we explore the impact of Zambia’s 2002 Universal Free Primary Education (UFPE) policy which created an exogenous source of variation in education as a quasi – experiment. The three substantial empirical studies, employ the same econometric methodology, a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), whose appealing feature is local randomisation. This characteristic has distinguished the method from other evaluation methods in terms of estimating unbiased treatment effects. Another advantage of the fuzzy Regression Discontinuity design is that it can account for the endogeneity of the treatment variable. The utilisation of the fuzzy Regression Discontinuity design is a valuable contribution in all of the research. Furthermore, every chapter makes a unique contribution within its respective sector. We outline Zambia’s Universal Free Primary Education (UFPE) Policy and also present the Regression Discontinuity Design methodology framework. We find significant causal impacts of maternal education on child health measured by height-for-age, weight-for-height and Weight-for- age. The findings also indicate that maternal education is associated with a reduction in the prevalence of stunting and underweight and no effect wasting contrary to other research. We present evidence of the several mechanisms by which maternal education impacts child health. The results of our study indicate that a greater level of maternal education exerts a beneficial influence on child health through the postponement of marriage, the reduction in total fertility, and the delay in the age of first childbirth and sexual debut. Additionally, we have discovered indications of positive assortative mating. Furthermore, education empowers moms by facilitating their access to information via television and newspapers, equipping them with knowledge about the ovulation time, and helping them to make well-informed decisions regarding contraceptive techniques. Conventional wisdom posits that decreased fertility may indicate the presence of “superior quality” children and increased rates of survival for both mother and child. Can education serve as a catalyst for decreasing fertility rates in developing nations? We find that female education reduces iv | P a g e the number of children ever born. We present evidence of the reduction in total fertility as a result of female education. We also show that female schooling reduces the preferred number of children and increases the age at first birth. We find that female schooling affects fertility through age at first sex and marriage, literacy, assortative mating and the knowledge effect. There is no evidence to suggest that female schooling has a major impact labour market participation. We present evidence of the heterogeneous impacts of a mother’s education based on “poor versus wealthy” criterion, whether rural/urban status, region and religion. We also present evidence of the effect of female education on the HIV seroprevalence status, number of sexual partners and knowledge of HIV transmission mechanisms. We show that female education lowers HIV seroprevalence status, decreases the number of sexual partners and increases HIV knowledge. Our research suggests that educated women are more likely to have a deep and detailed understanding of HIV. Lastly, we present evidence of the heterogeneous effects of female education by household status on HIV related outcomes.Item A review of the right to basic education, the 2020 Covid-19 related schools' shutdown, and the courts in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Booi, Ntombizinhle PrincessOwing to COVID-19, the South African government ordered the closure of educational facilities in the country to try and curtail the spread of the virus. At the time, no one knew the extent to which the virus had spread, its potency for the South African public, how it impacted on children and what actions the government could take, besides locking down the country. Both the government and the public were facing a pandemic of this kind for the first time. However, the closure of schools placed the educational rights of learners under a spotlight, as under the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, basic education is a right. The closure of the schools had many consequences for the right to basic education, including that education delivery, as it was then known, had to be changed. Yet, it is reasonable to assume that many schools were ill equipped for the sudden change which could not have been foreseen. To this end, there had to be a way forward for schools, and online learning became a viable avenue for ensuring that education did not come to a standstill. Yet again, it is reasonable to assume that many schools would not have had the capacity to transition to, let alone facilitate and maintain, online learning. A preliminary conclusion then would be that COVID-19 had a direct impact on the right to education. This is only the start, however, because the next line of inquiry would be whether the decision of the state to close educational facilities through the lockdowns was reasonable, and consequently justified considering the limitation it brought to the right to education. This report concludes by examining two cases that addressed these questions.Item An examination of the legal framework for the governace of public universities in South Africa: The case of the Vaal University of Technology(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mahlako, Neo; Moyo, KhulekaniItem How Diversity and Inclusion May Transform South African Commercial Property Organisations at Top Management Level(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017-08) Motshegare, Reabetswe Regina; Levy, DeborahThe purpose of this report is to outline contemporary transformation frameworks that emphasise diversity and inclusion and how the latter may likely transform Growthpoint Properties South Africa (Growthpoint S.A). The main focus of the consultancy report is to compare and contrast traditional transformation methodologies and contemporary diversity and inclusion methodologies as strategies to assist Growthpoint S.A transform its senior and executive management. The propositions are that; an effective transformation strategy for Growthpoint S.A is one that focuses on identification; inclusion; attraction; diversification and retention of key talent at senior levels. Furthermore, that once diversity and inclusion interventions are implemented, there will be transformation at senior and executive levels. Out of 15 executives in the management team, six representatives were interviewed. The limitations highlight that the majority of participants are South African and may have certain biased perceptions about the topic as opposed to the rest of the participants, who are foreign nationals. The methodology focuses on a thematic analysis and four themes namely: leadership; corporate culture; strategies and communication are identified. Following in-depth discussions, six recommendations are provided. These include 360-degree feedback; diversity and inclusion workshops; introduction of a diversity and inclusion forum; KPI’s that measure diversity and inclusion targets; workplace enhancement programmes that focus on diverse candidates and lastly, robust succession plans. The role of the researcher as a professional Human Resource Business Partner ensured that any work dealt with is approached ethically, and the researcher’s ability to do this ensured quality, reliability, validity and effectiveness of the research.