Abstract
M.A.
South African companies, faced with the challenges of keenly competitive global and
domestic markets, must reconsider their foci and methods of staff training and development.
Political pressures to address the imbalance of power in local workforces by activities such as
affirmative action also mean that the skills, knowledge and attitudes of employees must be
improved.
The Management Development in Afrox Training Programme, developed and conducted by
Afrox Limited, is targeted at the company's supervisory level and forms part of the company's
affirmative action policy. This level of employee reflects the heterogeneity of the South
African population and comprises persons of diverse language and cultural groups and
educational levels.
An investigation into the listening and reading comprehension levels of the delegates found
that the majority of them are not equipped to cope with the complex language used in a
typical management development programme. An understanding of sophisticated Western
business concepts, encapsulated in English for Specific Purposes, is not successfully
transferred to the delegates and results in a failure to deliver the desired outcomes of the
course.
Based on the findings of the research a number of recommendations have been made.
These have application not only to the Management Development in Afrox programme but to
business programmes which are currently not meeting the needs of their South African target
groups because of linguistic elements which confound the planned learning process.