Abstract
This study explored sustainability factors and their impact on operations management development in the dairy manufacturing sector in Johannesburg. Sustainable operations management development is an emerging concept that is important in the dairy manufacturing sector in order to comply with legislation and to remain competitive and innovative. However, sustainability initiatives are approached through entrenched habits favoring the status quo which, if unchallenged, may hinder the development of sustainable operations management. It is therefore vital for operations managers in the dairy manufacturing sector to know which sustainability factor(s) influence operations management development in order to make informed decisions.
To this end, the research investigated sustainability factors that influence operations management development in the dairy manufacturing sector. The study challenged the general model of operations management and evaluated the five-capital model of sustainability to determine which capital(s) influenced operations management development.
A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Simple random sampling was adopted in five dairy manufacturing enterprises. Data was collected from a sample of 100 respondents and analysed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (V23) programme. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the characteristics of the sample while a normality test was used to describe the symmetrical curve with the greatest frequency scores. To explore the relationship between the continuous variables, scatter plots were used while the linear correlation coefficient justified the correlation analysis. Reliability analysis with Cronbach’s alpha was conducted to check the internal uniformity of the data and to report the mean inter-item correlation.
Multiple regression analysis aided in exploring the relationship between the continuous dependent variables and the number of independent variables to predict the outcome of the study.
A Strong empirical support was discovered for the study with a positive association between social, human capital and operations management development...
M.Tech. (Operations Management)