Organization, People And Skills As An Enabler For Strategy Execution In Municipalities In South Africa

The formal organizational structure, including the control systems, is an important factor in strategy execution. The structure can be defined as the relationship between tasks, individuals, and formal and informal channels. Getting things done in many organizations feels like walking in quicksand; there are too many meetings, too many reports, too much information and too many stakeholders. Business processes are not effective and decisions are delayed or unclear. Organizations are more and more complex and municipalities present the same trend and complexity currently. People and their skills are becoming an even higher strategic element in executing strategy in this complex environment. Well-aligned business processes are crucial for the strategy execution process. Organizational restructuring will not automatically lead to improved performance and is not a quick solution. People with the right skills, capabilities and attitude toward execution are key and even when an organizational structure is not perfect, they will perform and deliver what is expected.

Factors to Measure the Performance of Private Business Schools in South Africa

This article identifies the latent variables embedded within the model to measure the performance of private business schools. In the quantitative research design, 247 questionnaires, using a five-point Likert scale, were analysed after completion by private business school supervisors and managers. The data has high reliability with a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.974 and excellent sample adequacy with a KMO value of 0.926. The analysis identified ten latent variables (or factors), identified using exploratory factor analysis explaining a cumulative variance of 70.56%. These are Regulatory compliance, Strategic communication, Educational technology stack, Strategic finance, Organisational development, Customer orientation, Sales, Pricing, Socio-political influence and Market focus. The study also succeeded to simplify measuring performance by eliminating 26 questions with low factor loadings (<0.40) or those that are cross-loading highly onto more than one factor from the questionnaire while retaining a satisfactory level of reliability. The results are valuable to private business school managers and to the employees wanting to measure and improve the business performance of a private business school. Researchers and academia could also benefit from the contribution of the study to either build on business performance of private business schools or, alternatively, in adopting the methodology employed in this study for another application setting

The Use of Social Media in Public Relations at Non-Governmental Organisations in South Africa

Social media can be a useful tool in public relations in non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but do NGOs make use of social media in their quest for service delivery in South Africa? Social networking sites, blogging, email, instant messaging, and online journals are some of the technological changes that changed the way interaction between people and how they gather information. Although social media is mainly used for interactive dialogue and social interaction, the private sector soon realised that the web-based technologies (especially Facebook and Twitter) could also be a competitive business tool. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) soon followed suit however at a slower pace than the general communication growth rate of social media in South Africa. This article examines if social networking sites have any impact on public relations practices of NGOs in South Africa – an environment where both customers and employees still struggle to take full advantage of social media. The critical literature findings increase the understanding of the current and future challenges of social media use in public relations at NGOs in South Africa. The study explores the main differences between traditional and social media, how social media is redefining public relations role, and shed some light on defining public relations practices, identify the uses, limitations and benefits of social media by public relations practitioners in NGOs. Recommendations for future communication research are given. Based on the literature, a qualitative research design collected data using semi-structured, individual interviews. The results revealed that social media platforms such as Facebook do have an effect, and even changed the way in which NGOs communicate. The study also revealed that social media certainly has an impact on public relations relationships. This means that it has become crucial that public relations practitioners at NOGs embrace and take advantage of social media, and that they should also invest in proper electronic platforms to reap the benefits of improved communication internally and externally

Diffuse infiltrative lymphocytosis syndrome presenting as renal failure in South African HIV-positive individuals: a single-centre case series

Diffuse infiltrative lymphocytosis syndrome (DILS) in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection presented most commonly with parotidomegaly and sicca symptoms in the pre-antiretroviral era. However, numerous clinical manifestations are possible due to the multi-organ nature of the CD8+ lymphocytic infiltration. Renal involvement is infrequently described, but common characteristics of a renal syndrome associated with DILS have been identified. This case series describes four South African HIV-positive patients with DILS, in whom renal failure was the sole clinical manifestation. As DILS responds well to antiretroviral and corticosteroid therapy, this series highlights the importance of considering this syndrome as a cause of renal failure in an HIV-positive patient

Expression of a malarial Hsp70 improves defects in chaperone-dependent activities in ssa1 mutant yeast

Plasmodium falciparum causes the most virulent form of malaria and encodes a large number of molecular chaperones. Because the parasite encounters radically different environments during its lifecycle, many members of this chaperone ensemble may be essential for P. falciparum survival. Therefore, Plasmodium chaperones represent novel therapeutic targets, but to establish the mechanism of action of any developed therapeutics, it is critical to ascertain the functions of these chaperones. To this end, we report the development of a yeast expression system for PfHsp70-1, a P. falciparum cytoplasmic chaperone. We found that PfHsp70-1 repairs mutant growth phenotypes in yeast strains lacking the two primary cytosolic Hsp70s, SSA1 and SSA2, and in strains harboring a temperature sensitive SSA1 allele. PfHsp70-1 also supported chaperone-dependent processes such as protein translocation and ER associated degradation, and ameliorated the toxic effects of oxidative stress. By introducing engineered forms of PfHsp70-1 into the mutant strains, we discovered that rescue requires PfHsp70-1 ATPase activity. Together, we conclude that yeast can be co-opted to rapidly uncover specific cellular activities mediated by malarial chaperones. © 2011 Bell et al

Comparison of Two Methods for In Vivo Estimation of the Glenohumeral Joint Rotation Center (GH-JRC) of the Patients with Shoulder Hemiarthroplasty

Determination of an accurate glenohumeral-joint rotation center (GH-JRC) from marker data is essential for kinematic and dynamic analysis of shoulder motions. Previous studies have focused on the evaluation of the different functional methods for the estimation of the GH-JRC for healthy subjects. The goal of this paper is to compare two widely used functional methods, namely the instantaneous helical axis (IHA) and symmetrical center of rotation (SCoRE) methods, for estimating the GH-JRC in vivo for patients with implanted shoulder hemiarthroplasty. The motion data of five patients were recorded while performing three different dynamic motions (circumduction, abduction, and forward flexion). The GH-JRC was determined using the CT-images of the subjects (geometric GH-JRC) and was also estimated using the two IHA and SCoRE methods. The rotation centers determined using the IHA and SCoRE methods were on average 1.47±0.62 cm and 2.07±0.55 cm away from geometric GH-JRC, respectively. The two methods differed significantly (two-tailed p-value from paired t-Test ∼0.02, post-hoc power ∼0.30). The SCoRE method showed a significant lower (two-tailed p-value from paired t-Test ∼0.03, post-hoc power ∼0.68) repeatability error calculated between the different trials of each motion and each subject and averaged across all measured subjects (0.62±0.10 cm for IHA vs. 0.43±0.12 cm for SCoRE). It is concluded that the SCoRE appeared to be a more repeatable method whereas the IHA method resulted in a more accurate estimation of the GH-JRC for patients with endoprostheses

Spatially explicit poisoning risk affects survival rates of an obligate scavenger

Obligate scavengers such as vultures provide critical ecosystem services and their populations have undergone severe declines in Asia and Africa. Intentional poisoning is a major threat to vultures in Africa, yet the impact on vulture populations of where poisoned carcasses are positioned is not known. We used re-sightings of 183 African white-backed vultures captured and tagged in two regions of South Africa, some 200 km apart, to estimate spatial differences in relative survival rates across life stages. Juvenile survival rates were similar in the two regions, whilst subadult and adult survival rates differed significantly. Using agent-based modelling, we show that this pattern of relative survival rates is consistent between regions that differ in intensity of poisoning, despite the proximity of the two regions. This may have important consequences for vulture conservation and the targeting of conservation efforts, particularly with regard to the efficacy of “vulture safe zones” around vulture breeding populations

Relative Impacts of Adult Movement, Larval Dispersal and Harvester Movement on the Effectiveness of Reserve Networks

Movement of individuals is a critical factor determining the effectiveness of reserve networks. Marine reserves have historically been used for the management of species that are sedentary as adults, and, therefore, larval dispersal has been a major focus of marine-reserve research. The push to use marine reserves for managing pelagic and demersal species poses significant questions regarding their utility for highly-mobile species. Here, a simple conceptual metapopulation model is developed to provide a rigorous comparison of the functioning of reserve networks for populations with different admixtures of larval dispersal and adult movement in a home range. We find that adult movement produces significantly lower persistence than larval dispersal, all other factors being equal. Furthermore, redistribution of harvest effort previously in reserves to remaining fished areas (‘fishery squeeze’) and fishing along reserve borders (‘fishing-the-line’) considerably reduce persistence and harvests for populations mobile as adults, while they only marginally changes results for populations with dispersing larvae. Our results also indicate that adult home-range movement and larval dispersal are not simply additive processes, but rather that populations possessing both modes of movement have lower persistence than equivalent populations having the same amount of ‘total movement’ (sum of larval and adult movement spatial scales) in either larval dispersal or adult movement alone