Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management (ETDs)

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    The impact of work from home and hybrid mode on cybersecurity practices in South Africa
    (University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Pather, Ravashalin
    As the trend of work-from-home and remote work grows in South Africa, adopting adequate cybersecurity measures and evaluating the human aspect of security perceptions is critical in protecting organisational information and maintaining corporate integrity. Over the past two decades, cybersecurity has been viewed from technological perspective of protecting networks and information assets, this study invokes the behavioural and social concerns, and how this affects an organisation’s cybersecurity strategy in South Africa. Covid-19 and the lockdown rules triggered a national emergency, compelling a considerable proportion of South Africa's workforce to embrace a work-from-home culture. While this study began during the lockdown, leaders at large enterprises in South Africa are adopting a more hybrid way of working permanently, due to the subsequent benefits. This study aimed to evaluate employee behaviour when working environments are suddenly affected by work-from-home policies and how an employee’s behaviour transposes to a different location. The overarching question was: How has cybersecurity behaviour in South Africa manifested during work-from-home policies and what are the determinants that force correct cybersecurity compliant behaviour?. Four key factors (“Subjective Norms & Response Efficacy”, “Attitude & Perceived Vulnerability”, “Self- Efficacy” and “Perceived Severity”) were identified and combined into a new framework based of two theoretical frameworks (The Theory of Planned Behaviour and Protection Motivation theory). This study utilised a quantitative cross-sectional design using a structured closed questionnaire that was distributed electronically. The data collected from 186 participants were analysed using Exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression. Overall, “Subjective Norms & Response Efficacy” emerged as a significant and most influential predicator of “Cybersecurity Compliant behaviour”. “Attitude & Perceived Vulnerability”, “Self-Efficacy” and “Perceived Severity” were insignificant. It is apparent that there is a positive perception of correct Cyber security practices amongst South African organisations however there is a recommendation for future research, due to the diversity of organisational leadership in both the private and state-owned entities, to provide a better understanding of security compliant behaviour
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    Exploring the perceived benefits and challenges of teleworking in South Africa
    (University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Mpungose, Nomvelo Carol
    Telework has long piqued the interest of scholars and policymakers because of its potential to benefit individuals, organisations, and society as a whole. Telework has existed since the advent of information and communication technology, but despite substantial technological advancements, it did not attain mainstream use until the COVID-19 epidemic. Few studies have re-examined the employee benefits and challenges following the COVID-19 epidemic in South Africa, among the various facets of telework research. The function of employee perceptions that may favourably or unfavourably affect the adoption of telework are explored in this study. This study tackles telework success as a multidimensional term by deconstructing the benefits and challenges of telework for people and organisations from previous literature. The system based telework framework was adopted for this study in particular the employee factors. Fifteen in-depth interviews were done using the purposive sampling approach. Overall, the findings supported the system-based telework paradigm since an analysis of the findings showed that the existing employee factors are still persistent. The study found that there are additional elements that are negatively impacting telework adoption in the South African context, such as load shedding, while a decrease in expenditures favourably influences telework adoption. Based on the findings of this study, the additional factors should be incorporated into the model for future research. Teleworking proved that employees could meet their job responsibilities while being flexible with where they work. Therefore, telework should not be treated as a optional type of work to organisations, but should rather form part of the organisations competitive employee attraction and retention strategy. the study found that employees prefer a hybrid way of working therefore organisational mandates that require employees to return to working from the office on a full-time basis negatively affects the adoption of telework