7 research outputs found
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The impact of environmental management plans on firms' compliance with governmental regulations and environmental laws
Many developed and developing countries have enacted environmental laws and regulations to control water quality and the environment. However, human activities, such as agriculture, urban and industrial development, mining, and recreation, significantly alter the quality of natural environments and their potential use. The compliance of firms with environmental laws is of great concern to scientists, governments, and regulatory agencies. The presence of hazardous chemicals in water resources even in small amounts may cause massive environmental damage. Thus, governments pass environmental laws and regulations to monitor human activity and enforce compliance with environmental standards. This study investigates the potential to improve firms' compliance with environmental standards by implementing an environmental management plan (EMP) within a public firm and a private firm in South Africa. EMP implementation is required to mitigate and manage environmental risk. This study asks the following research question: To what extent does EMP implementation enhance a firm's compliance to environmental laws and regulations? Further, to what extent are the specific characteristics of a firm associated with various EMP categories? The study used methods of inspection, observation, impact assessment, implementation, and monitoring to answer the research question. In both firms under study, the results showed no compliance with environmental law during initial site inspection and impact assessment. However, the implementation of EMPs in both firms improved compliance with environmental laws to nearly one hundred percent. As a result, EMPs were successfully implemented and monitored, improving the firms? Compliance with environmental laws and reducing negative environmental impacts to an insignificant level.
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Inclusive innovation and inequality in South Africa: a case for transformative social policy
South Africa's quest for inclusive innovation is encumbered by the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Although the present African National Congress government has made strides to promote inclusive innovation, structural inequalities inherited from apartheid hinder the creation of a new social contract. Social policy is today receiving greater attention in the field of innovation and development. Much emphasis is placed on the important issues of reproduction, redistribution and social production. However, in the South African context the vital concern of production needs to be considered. This article argues that transformative social policy in South Africa enhances innovation through its effects on human capital and skill formation and its capacity to alleviate risk. This paper uses a transformative social policy approach in contributing to discourse around inclusive
innovation in South Africa and the Global South.
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The state of innovation in South Africa: findings from the South African National Innovation Survey
Innovation in the private sector occurs within individual enterprises and sometimes as a collaborative effort between enterprises. The process of producing an innovation usually comprises strategic activities that firms do not readily wish to disclose to third parties, particularly competitors. However, governments are generally aware of the benefits of innovation to the economy and seek to better understand the innovative dynamics in firms so that they can provide appropriate support measures to stimulate and encourage further innovation in order to increase the productivity and competitiveness of the business sector. One way to gain insight into these important activities in the private sector is through the implementation of an innovation survey such as that carried out in the European Union through the Community Innovation Survey. In South Africa, the Department of Science and Technology commissioned the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators to undertake a series of national innovation surveys.
In this paper we report on selected findings from the second official South African Innovation Survey for the period 2005-2007.
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Graphenated polyaniline-doped tungsten oxide nanocomposite sensor for real time determination of phenanthrene
A graphenated polyaniline/tungsten oxide (PANI/WO3/GR) nanocomposite sensor was prepared by elec-tropolymerisation of a mixture of aniline monomer and tungsten oxide on a graphene-modified glassycarbon electrode (GCE). The PANI/WO3/GR/GCE nanocomposite electrode was tested as a sensor for the determination of phenanthrene. The direct electro-oxidation behaviour of phenanthrene on thePANI/WO3/GR modified GCE was carefully investigated by cyclic voltammetry. The results indicated that the PANI/WO3/GR/GCE sensor was more sensitive to phenanthrene (with a dynamic linear range of 1.0 -6.0 pM and a detection limit of 0.123 pM.) than GCE, PANI/GCE or PANI/WO3/GCE. The sensor exhibited excellent reproducibility and long-term stability. The sensor exhibits lower detection sensitivity than the WHO permissible level of 1.12 nM phenanthrene in waste water.
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South African National Survey of Research and Experimental Development: main analysis report 2011/12
Commissioned by the Department of Science and Technology, MarchThis report provides trends and a brief analysis of the survey data of the 2011/12 South African National Survey of Research and Experimental Development (R&D survey)
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Results of the 2011 UIS pilot data collection of innovation statistics
The relationship between innovation and economic development is widely acknowledged. Innovation is a key element in the growth of output and productivity, and therefore crucial for poverty alleviation. While research and experimental development (R&D) plays a vital role in the innovation process, many of the related activities rely on highly-skilled workers, interactions with other firms and public research institutions, as well as an organizational structure that is conducive to learning and exploiting knowledge.
These factors should be taken into account by policymakers. To this end, data are required to better understand innovation and its relation to economic growth, as well as to provide indicators for benchmarking national performance.
Over the last few decades, work has been undertaken to establish analytical frameworks and guidelines for innovation studies. Efforts to standardize innovation definitions and indicators came to the forefront with the publication of the first version of the Oslo Manual (OM) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1992. The manual pushed the measurement of innovation as a process, fostering the collection of comparable innovation indicators since its first edition. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is striving to increase the availability of timely, accurate and policy-relevant statistics in the field of science, technology and innovation (STI) through the development of a database of cross-nationally comparable innovation statistics. To this end, the UIS launched a pilot data collection of innovation statistics in 2011 in order to prepare for the global data collection which will be launched in 2013. The pilot data collection was based on the definitions of the third edition of the Oslo Manual, covering four types of innovation in the business sector. Data were collected for manufacturing, services and total economic activities covered by each national innovation survey. However, this report focuses exclusively on cross-nationally comparable data for the manufacturing industry. It should be noted that there are certain limitations in comparisons between countries due to differences in the methodological procedures of the national innovation surveys. The pilot data collection sought to gather aggregate data from the most recent national innovation surveys in 19 selected countries. Countries were asked to complete the pilot questionnaire using grossed up 2 results of their national innovation surveys. The following 12 countries participated in the pilot data collection: Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, South Africa and Uruguay. Eurostat has led the way in sustaining the production of internationally comparable data on innovation in enterprises through its Community Innovation Surveys (CIS). Based on the CIS, Eurostat produces innovation statistics for member states and candidate countries of the European Union, Iceland and Norway, which are frequently used for comparison in national innovation survey reports. Therefore, in order to enhance interpretation of the UIS pilot results, whenever possible, this paper compares the data collected with Eurostat's CIS3 results from 2006 and 2008.
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South African National Survey of Research and Experimental Development: stastistical report 2011/12
Commisioned by the Department of Science and Technology, MarchThis report presents selected data tables of the 2011/12 South African National Survey of Research and Experimental Development (R&D survey). The tables in this report cover the main dimensions of R&D statistics in terms of expenditure and human resources