Role of Student Ratings of Lecturers in Enhancing teaching at Higher Education Institutions: A case study of the Durban University of Technology

Evaluation of the quality of programmes by students is considered an important assessment instrument in determining programme effectiveness within higher education institutions. Student ratings of lecturers are only a partial assessment of programmes, since other evaluations beyond students’ perceptions are also considered important within higher education institutions. Student ratings are not only important in determining how students perceive their programmes within a highly competitive higher education landscape in South Africa, but also highlight the strengths and weaknesses of programmes which can be used as an impetus for programme enhancement, especially in view of the increasing number of students entering higher education, while government spending is steadily diminishing. The purpose of this study is to assess student ratings of teaching competencies that can be used for programme evaluation. A quantitative approach was used to analyse the various elements within specific domains in the lecturer evaluation instrument used by the Faculty of Management Sciences at the Durban University of Technology (DUT). The data reported are suggestive of the usefulness of identifying student ratings of important teaching competencies, which is considered as important in a growing student centred orientation within higher education institutions. The article offers constructive analysis of student ratings of various teaching competencies across departments in the faculty, while highlighting strategies to ensure enhanced validity of student ratings. Student ratings of lecturers provide valuable information for faculty to use in programme assessment and consequent programme enhancement. Further, student ratings of lecturers encourages a student’s voice through confidential participation, thereby ensuring that the student experience is fore grounded at the learning and teaching interface

Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethical Banking for Developing Economies

Corporate social responsibility is being increasingly considered vital for organizational success and sustainable growth, especially in view of corporations operating in an environment with multiple stakeholder interests. Investment in CSR should not been seen as an expense, but rather the allocation of resources to strengthen relationships with stakeholders in an endeavour to reap the multifaceted benefits of such investments Financial institutions like banks need to be seen as leading organizations who engage in social activities that uplift society, the environment and economy. The article analyses significant areas of corporate social responsibility for banks which are integral for customers, government, suppliers, citizens, employees and global partners for enhancing the responsibility of banks to a diverse range of stakeholders who have an interest in the banks. This ‘common good’ reputation can provide several advantages to banks which further impacts on the performance of banks

The nexus between Narcissist Followers and Leaders-Antecedent for Toxic Leadership

Increasingly, it is recognized that organizations have toxic leaders, who harm organizational success. While they harm organizational success, it can be argued that followers who collude are also contributors to such harm. Literature increasingly points to the interrelationship between leaders and organizations and its impact on organizational success. Notably absent is the systematic examination of the toxic relationship between leaders and followers as colluders and its impact on organizational success. The purpose of the paper is to examine the extent to which followers as colluders reinforce toxic leadership through the relational aspects. The focus is on active, destructive and unethical leaders within the negative leadership continuum, since it is difficult to claim that behaviours representing passiveness and incompetence are equally negative. Through a relational approach to leadership study, the situated commonality between leaders and followers is explored to show that manifestations of narcissism in both leaders and followers who collude in perpetuating toxic leadership can cause organizations to drift into failure. The paper does not consider leadership in any organizational or situational context. The study’s methodology contributes to the objective of the research. The use of a qualitative research method was useful in arguing the exhibitionism of narcissism not only among leaders, but also followers. This method aligns with the purpose of the study. There is a paucity of literature on how the relational aspects of the leader-follower dynamic influence the toxic leadership/ followership reality. The relevancy of the study not only contributes to the literature on toxic leadership, but more specifically showing how narcissist followers as colluders influence narcissist leaders in a toxic leadership relationship. By examining the toxic leader/ follower relationship, a richer understanding of toxic followers can possibly emerge. This is important, since leaders do not produce results alone, together with the followers they contribute to the well-being of the organization. A range of practitioner research articles and published empirical research articles were reviewed to highlight narcissism among toxic leaders and elaborate on the destructive role of followers who reinforce toxic leadership through support. The analysis shows that while leaders and followers as colluders can cause harm to organizational outcomes, the extent of the harm can be largely influenced by the nature of the narcissist traits commonly endorsed by both. The paper highlights an overall framework that may help to identify the major considerations needed to mitigate the harmful effects of the narcissist leader/ follower relationship on positive organisational outcomes. Further, the paper suggests examining the relational aspects of leaders and followers as colluders, especially by looking at the impact of various narcissist traits that potentially strengthen the toxic relationship between the leader and follower. Finally, it is recommended that the proposed guidelines be tested in an empirical paper to measure their effectiveness

A Review of Quality Management Systems in South African HIV-AIDS Programmes: A Pre-Requisite for Sustainable Health Delivery

The global commitment to end HIV-AIDS is a bold one; requiring a multi-sectoral response strongly embedded within effective HIV-AIDS prevention efforts, patient advocacy and effective healthcare programme delivery. UNAIDS estimates that, of the 36.7 million individuals infected with HIV-AIDS globally, 19.1 million reside in South Africa (UNAIDS Gap report, 2016).In addition, approximately 2.1 million new HIV infections occurred in 2015 with almost 960 000 of those occurring in South Africa signalling that the rates of infections are not dropping as expected (UNAIDS Gap report, 2016). Given the unrelenting nature of this disease burden, even greater efforts are now required to turn the tide on HIV-AIDS globally, but more so in South Africa. These efforts entail more effective HIV-AIDS service delivery with combination prevention modalities, access to HIV-AIDS treatment and care, harm reduction of HIV-AIDS stigma and discrimination together with HIV-AIDS education, awareness and advocacy. Enhancing HIV-AIDS service delivery requires strong commitment with implementation of quality management systems in programme service delivery resulting in sustainable, effective and well run HIV-AIDS programmes. Quality management systems in HIV-AIDS programmes allow programmes to successfully meet their objectives thus allowing optimal patient care through effective and efficient means. To date there has been minimal implementation of quality systems in healthcare especially in South Africa. The use of health quality tools and systems in HIV-AIDS programmes locally and globally will allow for efficient and cost effective benefits for the optimal wellbeing of all those affected and infected by HIV-AIDS. This article reviews available data on the prevalence of quality management systems in HIV-AIDS healthcare and identifies gaps and smart practises towards recommendations for comprehensive global HIV-AIDS standards development

Outsourcing Practices In Malaysia: A SWOT Analysis On The ICT Industry

In the last decade, outsourcing  has emerged as an important tool for enabling business around the world to gain full benefit. As Malaysia develops, the businesses must keep pace with changes that are occurring. Outsourcing initiatives are intended to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the business processes as well as IT performance. The rethinking of business strategies to develop and exploit core competencies, set the outsourcing bandwagon rolling.  It seeks to improve the quality, cost efficiency and seize of competitive advantage. This paper discusses the potential of  Malaysia as a global player for ICT outsourcing. The paper focuses on SWOT analysis of ICT outsourcing in Malaysia. This paper identifies current situations in Malaysia and discuss further with the analysis on strength, weaknesses, opportunity and threats which will give effect to the businesses and society at large. No significantThere is hardly any  study has been carried out on analyzing the ICT outsourcing industry’s potential in Malaysia. This is an emerging industry that Malaysian companies can should focus on by leveraging on thier  and develop the strengths and avoiding the threats within the overall ICT outsourcing foray. The lack of studyies and the potential of this industry in Malaysia, have motivated the authors to write about this topic. research further and contribute to the industry in terms of how to enhance its capabilities. The SWOT analysis will be the basis for the research.Our findings suggests that, Malaysia has the strength of becoming world player in ICT outsourcing because sufficient infrastructure, strategic position of Malaysia and English language is widely spoken. These are the plus points of Malaysia to further excel as the provider of ICT outsourcing. On the other hand, the weaknesses that need to overcome is the low level of  e-readiness in the world ranking. Political will and links with Middle East, China and India are the opportunities for Malaysia to laverage on its strength. However, Malaysia also need to avoid the threats such as slowly loosing competitive edge to lower cost producers namely Vietnam and China. Finally, our paper concludes with some options to enhance the capabilities of Malaysia as ICT outsourcing provider

Factors Influencing Debt Financing within State-owned Corporations in Kenya

Debt financing is deemed crucial for economic development, as evidenced by the positive relationship between financial deepening and economic growth. Majority of studies on debt financing have been undertaken using data from developed economies, focusing more on private sector nonfinancial corporations. This study, therefore, attempts to fill the gap in the literature by investigating the factors influencing debt financing, using data from corporations within the public sector and from a developing economy. The study applied the fixed effects (FE), random effects (RE) and the general methods of moments (GMM), using the panel data regression analysis. Profitability, asset tangibility and corporation growth, were identified to be the main factors influencing debt financing within state-owned corporations in Kenya

Cyber Security Violation in I0T-Enabled Bright Society: A Proposed Framework

The undesirable consequences of ICT proliferation remains a big concern. The rise in Internet of Things (IoT) have further exacerbated security and information privacy challenges. One main reason is organizations and individuals constantly violate regulations and rules. While cybersecurity and privacy scholars accentuate on the likelihood of rule violations at the individual and organizational levels, the evidence for and discussion of this concept is still scant. This study proposes an empirical response to the Bright ICT initiative of the Association of Information System. This initiative aims to drastically eliminate adverse effect of Internet of Things (IoT). However, a robust privacy and cybersecurity model is needed. This study draws on the selective organizational information privacy and security violation model and delineate it at individual level. Specifically, attitude towards behaviour and subjective norms, contextual conditions, rule and regulatory conditions, perceived risk of violating a privacy or security rule, economic and non-economic strain constructs are hypothesized to determine the likelihood of a privacy and cybersecurity rule violation. In this context, pertinent cybersecurity literatures for IoT-enabled environment were examined to suggest solutions to reduce the dark side of IoT-enabled bright society. This paper presents the proposed model

Novel siRNA lipoplexes : their targeted and untargeted delivery to mammalian cells in culture.

Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.The high gene knockdown specificity and efficiency of RNA interference (RNAi) provides a potentially viable avenue for the development of a new class of nucleic acid therapeutics for gene-based disease conditions. However, serum instability, inefficient cellular trafficking and non-specific effects of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), one of the functional mediators of RNAi, has necessitated the development of carriers to facilitate targeted cell delivery. The decline of viral vectors in human gene therapy as a consequence of safety issues has intensified the importance of non-viral vector development. Among the non-viral vectors available for siRNA delivery, cationic liposomes have emerged as an attractive option owing to their simplicity, versatility, relatively low toxicity and potential for cell-specific targeting. Although existing cationic lipids and liposomes traditionally used for DNA delivery have also been used for siRNAs, there still exists a need to develop cationic lipids tailored towards siRNA transfection for improved gene silencing efficiency. Among the cell specific targets available for RNAi therapeutics, hepatocytes expressing the asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGP-R) are an ideal choice due to the large number of disease targets present for treatment. In this investigation four novel cationic liposome formulations were prepared from equi-molar quantities of either the cationic cholesterol derivative 3β [N-(N’,N’- dimethylaminopropane)-carbamoyl] cholesterol (Chol-T) or 3β [N-(N’, N’, N’- trimethylammoniumpropyl)-carbamoyl] cholesterol iodide (Chol-Q) and DOPE, with and without the hepatotropic ligand, cholesteryl-β-D-galactopyranoside. Electrophoretic gel analysis and SYBR®green displacement assays were employed to determine siRNA binding and condensation efficiencies for all cationic liposomes; while liposome and lipoplex size measurements were made by cryoTEM. SiRNAlipoplex stability in serum was determined by the nuclease protection assay. Cell studies performed on the ASGP-R+ human hepatoma cells, HepG2 and the ASGP-Rembryonic kidney cells, HEK293, to determine lipoplex toxicity and transfection efficiencies were also undertaken. We show that the cationic liposomes formulated for this investigation were able to bind synthetic siRNA optimally at a positive to negative charge ratio of ± 1 : 6. In addition, the cationic liposomes were able to afford siRNA duplexes substantial protection from ribonuclease digestion in serum. From the results obtained in this study, it appears that the cationic liposomes are well tolerated by both the HEK293 and HepG2 cells in vitro. More importantly, the results obtained demonstrated higher transfection efficiencies for the targeted lipoplexes compared with the untargeted controls, strongly supporting the notion that incorporation of the cholestryl-β-D-galactopyranoside into the liposome structure increases transfection efficiency to the targeted HepG2 cells in culture via ASGP receptor mediation. Comparative studies in the HEK293 cell line yielded low transfection effeciences in the order of 20%, with no significant difference being recorded between galactosylated and non-galactosylated lipoplexes

The Inception Of Ethical Banking: An Imperative Transformation In Post-Revolution Egypt

While the Egyptian Revolution has initiated democratic transformation, the economy remains vulnerable to shocks that are apt to exacerbate unemployment, inequity, and poverty – the prime triggers of the popular uprising. Stability hinges on the newly elected government’s ability to accelerate macroeconomic growth, create jobs, and alleviate poverty. Prior to the popular unrest, the Egyptian banking sector was principally focused on financial return, and Egyptian regulators were mainly concerned with bank soundness. While there has been a paradigm shift in bank customers’ perception of banks as needing to have an intrinsic ethical responsibility, ethical banking is still in its infancy stage in the Egyptian banking sector. This research aims to bridge the gap between the newly developed perceptions of Egyptian savers/borrowers on the one hand and the conduct of bankers on the other hand. To this avail, we introduce a two-stage model where the value creation of banks is not solely confined to pure financial value – but the human, social, and environmental demands of all stakeholders are integrated. In the first stage, instead of adopting mainstream ethics and sustainability indexes, we administer a field survey in order to develop a stakeholder-centric view of the requisites of (1) ethical banking principles, (2) lending policies with human, socially, and ecologically responsible criteria, (3) ethical screening, (4) risk minimization, and (5) the maximization of financial returns. Subsequent to building the all-inclusive Ethical Banking Index (EBI), the second stage of the model gauges the performance of Egyptian banks. The EBI is not only applicable to Egypt, but could also prove useful to nations encountering similar socioeconomic woes