The effectiveness of strategic management intervention in developing profitable high growth African businesses
- Authors: Kaija, Godfrey , Nieuwenhuizen, Cecile
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Strategic planning , Business enterprises , Small business - Economic aspects , Small business - Management , Sustainable development , Human capital
- Language: English
- Type: Conference proceedings
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/235963 , uj:24141 , Citation: Kaija, G. & Nieuwenhuizen, C. 2017. The effectiveness of strategic management intervention in developing profitable high growth African businesses.
- Description: Abstract: The objective of the research was to determine how the the strategic management intervention of the African Management Services Company (AMSCO) has contributed to improved profitability, growth and sustainability of businesses in African countries. Businesses ranging from very small to multinational subsidiaries that were involved in a three year AMSCO intervention were selected to participate in the study. Self-administered questionnaires as well financial and other records and documents of 55 participating businesses resulted in the findings that the intervention, especially with the placement of the AMSCO managers, was instrumental in successfully transferring business and management skills to local employees within these enterprises and organisations. During and after the intervention the profitability, growth, sustainability, employment numbers and retention of the majority of the businesses increased and training became a norm.
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Adapting IT management for effective IT strategy leadership
- Authors: Langa, Mthandeni , Marnewick, Carl
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Information technology - Management , Strategic planning
- Language: English
- Type: Conference proceedings
- Identifier: http://ujcontent.uj.ac.za8080/10210/373894 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/231957 , uj:23644 , Citation: Langa, M. & Marnewick, C. 2017. Adapting IT management for effective IT strategy leadership. International Association for Management of Technology IAMOT 2017 Conference Proceedings.
- Description: Abstract: This article argues that the lack of consistent information technology (IT) and organisational strategies heightens the proclivity to cancel IT initiatives. Organisational strategy loosely conveys a compounded perspective pertaining to business and organisational strategies. The combination of these strategies logically hinge on efficient enterprise IT integration concepts contextualising conceptual links between their respective architectures to best suit prevailing business and socioeconomic needs. However, an effective socioeconomy demands contextual strategic management of IT, aligned with geopolitical and other factors affecting the nature of IT, to optimise the applied context of principles of governance and management. Strategic management of IT is alleviated by the concept of levels of abstraction inherent in the principle of separation of concerns. Hence the strategic use of the concept in ‘opinion’ formulation within the paradigm of a sociotechnical system design, development and management. Accordingly, optimal business performance demands that business and IT leadership and management develop mechanisms to establish symbiosis between governance and management principles, glued together by an adaptive enterprise‐wide standard architecture. There is therefore a contended need to integrate IT, processes and strategies. This demands that business and IT professionals possess an interdisciplinary and a multidisciplinary set of competencies. The perceived set of competencies supposedly help professionals to effectively navigate the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of information technology management (ITM). Thus the ensuing sociotechnical system constructs represent the challenge imposed by the journey to purposefully adapt ITM for effective IT strategy leadership for a competitive economic system. The research used an advanced mixed research methodology embedding quantitative methods in a qualitative study...
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